Cheney Care Center

We awarded this facility an A- in the short-term care category. In forming these short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

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. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 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 facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning patients at least once a day.

We awarded this nursing home just a D for our long-term care grade. This is not a very good score. For prospective patients seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 96.296295 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is more than the average nursing home. Surprisingly, this facility also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

Turning the last category of inspections, this facility did not fare well. Sadly, it received an F in our inspection category. This dragged this facility's overall grade down as we heavily weight this category. We would advise paying special attention to any deficiencies on a facility's inspection reports when it receives this poor of an inspection grade. We would scrutinize the severity of those deficiencies. This particular nursing home was hit with 10 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they posed a threat to resident safety or health. Lastly, we want to point out that this place received large government fines in recent years of more than $100,000. This generally signifies that a facility's bad track record spanned several years.