Beacon Ridge, a Choice Comm

One of the reasons this place is a strong facility is that it earned a very impressive inspection score. In fact, inspections is its best category grade. In this area, we awarded it an A. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

Among this facility's other strengths is its elite nursing grade. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A-. Our nursing rating is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The third highest category we gave this facility in any category came in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a B-. For prospective patients seeking a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Thankfully, this facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an above average percentage. This facility also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The last area we analyzed is short-term care. This nursing home was given a strong short-term care grade in our assessment, with a B-. While this isn't nearly as dominant as several of its other grades, this is nevertheless a decent grade in this category. Our short-term care grades are critical for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This includes a broad scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.