Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center-Snu

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received a much better grade for nursing than it received overall. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. When determining a facility's nursing score, we assess the number of hours nurses are caring for residents as well as the skill levels of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving residents even once per day.

This facility also performed favorably in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Not many facilities fared better in this area. In determining our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is frequently a reliable measure of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this category is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This facility also performed well in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A. Not many nursing homes fared more favorably in this category. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. It doesn't appear that this nursing home submitted data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Moving on our last category of inspections, this nursing home received a grade that's as bad as it gets. Unfortunately, with an F in the inspection category, this facility's overall grade was pulled down significantly. When a place has this poor of an inspection rating, you should look for severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to resident safety. This particular facility had 3 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only positive thing we found is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they posed a risk to resident safety or health. Finally, we need to point out that this facility was assessed significant government fines in recent years amounting to over $100,000. This often signifies that a facility's bad track record has been an issue for more than one year.