Apple Ridge Care Center

To pair with its decent overall grade, we gave this nursing home an A for its inspection grade. This grade is far better than the facility's overall score. Inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category typically have very few severe deficiencies. This facility received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to create an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another strength of this nursing home is its top-shelf score in long-term care. We gave them one of our better grades in that area, with a score of A-. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are well cared for. Once we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. The nursing rating considers several factors. The most heavily weighted one is the quantity of hours nurses spend with residents. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

The last area we graded is short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a D for the area of short-term care, rendering this its weakest category. In forming these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Unfortunately, we discovered that this facility offered less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most nursing homes. The last datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics sunk this facility's short-term care grade.