Cedar Lake Nursing Home

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an excellent inspection score. In fact, its inspection grade was far better than its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite minor. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. A few minor dings aren't the end of the world.

This nursing home also was awarded an impressive long-term care score. Indeed, we awarded it a grade of B+ in this area, which happens to be one of our better. Facilities that receive this type of grade in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are kept in good health. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 95.21277 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to avoid unnecessary deaths for the senior population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also awarded this facility a favorable grade in nursing. This facility earned a grade of B in this category, which is one of our better grades. When computing our nursing ratings, we look at both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final category we rated was short-term care. We gave it an F for this area, which is a rock bottom score. This is certainly a major disappointment. In crafting these short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to devise a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.