Sandhills Care Center

To pair with its relatively modest overall score, we gave this facility an A- for its inspection grade. This grade is far more impressive than the facility's overall rating. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

We also awarded this facility a favorable grade in nursing. This facility earned a grade of B+ in this category, which is one of our better grades. The nursing grade considers several factors. The most important factor is the quantity of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we looked at is short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a decent grade of B-. In computing our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is more often than not a fair measure of the facility's rehabilitation. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The final metric we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

The last category we looked at is long-term care. It received an F in this category, which is a bottom of the barrel score. This is certainly a major concern. Nursing homes that do not fare well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in a few of the areas of routine medical care we looked at. Once we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were a bit concerned this facility vaccinated a relatively low 61.25 percent of its patients against pneumonia. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.