Nhc Health Care, Charleston

To pair with a strong overall grade, we gave this nursing home an A+ for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Our nursing score is mostly associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The third category we looked at is short-term care. This nursing home performed well in our short-term care rating also. We gave them an impressive score of A+ in this area. Our short-term care ratings are believed to be more critical for residents in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

In the last area, we gave this nursing home an A+ for its long-term care grade. This finished off a very strong report card. Facilities that do well in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. One of the statistics we considered after nursing hours is vaccines. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a great way to avoid unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.