Moultrie Creek Nursing and Rehab Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. This facility was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it was given a favorable long-term care grade. In fact, long-term care is its second best category score. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A-. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the datapoints we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 99.346405 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.07 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home.

This facility's third highest category is short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B-. Our short-term care grade is often employed to judge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation To provide highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to have higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. One reason for this place's strong score in this category is that it provides a substantially greater volume of physical therapist hours to its patients than the average nursing home. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that it outperformed the majority of facilities in the nation with 53 percent of its patients returning home. This is a better rate than most nursing homes.

This facility's weakest area is nursing, which is the last category we assessed. In this category, we awarded this facility a grade of D. There are a variety of factors included in this category. Most of the subcategories are tied to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. Quantity of nursing care does not appear to be the source of this facility's poor nursing grade. This place provides 4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is better than we expected. In determining our scores, we add additional weight to hours performed by highly skilled nurses such as registered nurses. Lastly, we also factored in some quality-based measures in this category. This nursing home fared well in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. For example, in terms of the number of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this nursing home performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided with better nursing care.