Caledonia Rehabilitation & Retirement Center

Although we were not high on this facility's overall score, it earned an impressive short-term care score this year. We gave it a grade of B+ in this area, which proved to be a rare glimmer of hope in its profile. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to gauge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To have high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to have better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

We also gave this facility a strong grade in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. This is better than most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing rating is primarily tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a resident even once per day.

We also wanted to draw your attention to this nursing home's inspection grades where it received an F. This generally means we found some red flags on the inspection reports. We would advise paying close attention to any deficiencies on a nursing home's inspection reports when it receives this bad of an inspection rating. We would scrutinize the severity of those deficiencies. This nursing home was assessed 9 deficiencies by CMS. The only favorable thing we can say is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they caused a threat to patient safety or health. Lastly, we also need to point out that this nursing home was assessed significant government fines recently amounting to over $100,000. This often signifies that a facility's bad performance spanned multiple years.

The next area we rated was long-term care. Sadly, it received an F in this category, which is a rock bottom score. Long-term care grades in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 92.0354 percent of its patients, which is a few points lower than we expected. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This is its best feature in this category.