Aspen Park of Cascadia

On top of being a strong nursing home overall, this nursing home really excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A. Few facilities fared better in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively minor. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among the reasons we rated this facility so well is that it was awarded a dominant long-term care grade. In fact, long-term care ended up being its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A-. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are kept in good health. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 99.386505 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a life or death illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization 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 B-. This wasn't quite on par with some of its other category grades mentioned above. When calculating a nursing home's nursing rating, we consider the number of hours nurses are caring for patients and the skill levels of those nurses. 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. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did well in this metric. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving patients more often.

The final area we analyzed was short-term care. We gave this facility a grade of C in this category. In the category of short-term care, we seek to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 4.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below the national average.