Cascades at Orchard Park

One of the reasons this proved to be a quality facility is that it received a very impressive short-term care rating. Short-term care turned out to be its best category. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an impressive grade of A-. In determining our short-term care ratings, we size up the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This grade is frequently a fair measure of the facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This facility also performed well in the area of inspections. In fact, it earned a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best grades in that area with an A-. Few nursing homes with an overall grade in this range performed as well in multiple categories. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively insignificant. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. In computing our nursing scores, we assess both staffing levels and the training levels of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home Utah in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning residents at least once a day.

The last area we assessed is long-term care. We gave it a grade of B- in that area. This is a fair grade in this category. Long-term care grades are based in part on a facility's amount of nursing services. This includes a broad spectrum of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine medical services. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. This place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.