Timber Ridge at Talus

On top of receiving a great overall score, this nursing home excelled at short-term care. In fact, we awarded it an impressive grade of A for that category. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is considered to be a useful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

We also want to alert you to the fact that this nursing home received a dominant score of A in our long-term care area. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After we finished assessing the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a deadly illness for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Nursing grades are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Washington in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning a patient at least once a day.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this facility also excelled in inspections, where it received an A-. This topped off a straight A report card for this nursing home. Inspection ratings account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that CMS didn't deem 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.