Presbyterian Home of South Carolina- Foothills

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also earned A+ government inspections recently. Its inspections were virtually perfect. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This first-rate nursing home also fared very well in the area of short-term care, where it received a score of A+. Only a small group of nursing homes performed better in this category. Short-term care ratings are important for people looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. This includes a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final measure we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. Nursing grades are based in large part on nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we analyzed was long-term care, where this facility received a grade of A. This finished off a very strong profile. Very few facilities received an A- or better in every category. For prospective residents seeking a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down this place's vaccination data. 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 less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.