Pruitthealth- Columbia

While we did not have many favorable things to say about this facility's overall grade, it did receive a respectable nursing grade of B-. Our nursing rating weighs a number of subcategories. The most important variable is the amount of time nurses spend with residents. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. While this place got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of these quality measures. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this statistic. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning a patient more frequently.

This facility's next most favorable category was its short-term care grade, where it received a grade of B-. In computing our short-term care scores, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The key is determining what bearing this had on the quality of care. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The third best area we gave this nursing home in any area came in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a B-. For residents seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours is vaccines. Thankfully, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 95.89041 percent of its residents. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The last category we addressed was inspections. We gave this facility a grade of C. Our inspection score is based on the facility's government inspection reports. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite insignificant. This facility had 2 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but fortunately none were in categories G through L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent danger to resident health or safety. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.