Nhc Health Care, Charleston

On top of being a great facility overall, it also earned A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually perfect. Our inspection ratings are based on several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This nursing home also excelled in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a score of A. Only a select group of nursing homes fared better in this area. Our short-term care grades are vital for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing. This means a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. There are several factors within this area. Many of these factors relate to staffing levels. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of moving a resident at least once a day.

The last area we graded was long-term care, where this nursing home received a C. While this wound up being its lowest category rating, this is still nothing to be ashamed of. Long-term care grades focus on a facility's personal care instead of the highly skilled therapy or healthcare services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. One of the factors we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccines. Candidly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to a relatively low 78.94737 percent of its patients. Nevertheless, this facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.