Cedar Crest Senior Living

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ in the area of short-term care. Our short-term care scores are likely more meaningful for residents in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the number of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Adding to its impressive category scores, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Few nursing homes performed as well in this area. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area tend to have few severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A-. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses worked with residents, in determining our rating in this category. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a resident more frequently.

The next area we looked at was long-term care. We gave this facility one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a B. While this wasn't as strong as some of its other scores, it is still a fine score. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 95.595856 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.