Oconee Health and Rehabilitation

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite minor. While this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its high-end resume, this nursing home also performed well in our long-term care category. In fact, it received a grade of A- for the area. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 96.58119 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. The nursing rating is based on a handful of subcategories, most of which are associated with levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving residents even once per day.

The next area we graded was short-term care, in which this nursing home was awarded a grade of B. While this is its lowest category rating, this is still an impressive grade. In our short-term care rating, we attempt to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we assess the facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on 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 who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.