Cedar Hill Health Care Center

In addition to receiving an elite overall rating, this nursing home earned an A+ inspection grade. This grade is based on its recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can offer a nursing home. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing grade is largely based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home 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 country 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 having a system of turning a resident even once per day.

Compounding its high-end resume, this nursing home also received a superb long-term care grade, with a score of A-. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The final area we graded was short-term care, where this nursing home received a grade of B+. This completed a first-rate report card. Only a select few nursing homes earned a B+ or better in every single category. In forming these short-term care grades, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last item we looked at in this area is the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.