Cedars Health Center

While this place's overall grade was not a highlight, it actually received a slightly more favorable score in the area of inspections. We awarded it a B- for this category, which is not bad. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. This facility was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to be an immediate risk to resident safety or health. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.

We also awarded this facility a grade of B- for our nursing rating. Nursing scores are largely tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provides only 0.5 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure which is well below average. Lastly, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. Although this facility got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this statistic. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning residents even once per day.

This facility's next best category was short-term care. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. Our short-term care scores are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a vast range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The final measure we considered in this category is the number of patients who ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that just 5.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below the national average.

The last area we rated was long-term care. This nursing home was awarded a grade of B- for the area. In calculating our long-term care scores, we size up the assistance with daily living received by the nursing home's residents. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Thankfully, this nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is a very solid datapoint. This facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.