Sprenger Healthcare of Bluffton

In addition to earning a strong overall grade, this facility performed well in our short-term care category. We awarded it an A- for that category. Our short-term care scores are likely most meaningful for those requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to find information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

In addition, this nursing home also performed well in our inspection category, which is based on the facility's recent government inspections. In fact, we gave it an A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. This facility didn't perform quite as well in this category as it did in some other categories. Nevertheless, this is still a respectable score. Our nursing rating is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. Although this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did very well in this subcategory. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of moving a patient even once per day.

The last area we rated is long-term care. This nursing home was given a C in the category. Long-term care ratings are based in part on a facility's volume of nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine medical services. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.91304 percent of its residents. Lastly, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.