Cheney Care Center

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we gave it a B- for short-term care. In computing our short-term care ratings, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This area is considered to be a useful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than a typical facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

Remarkably, we awarded this nursing home a grade of C for our nursing rating, which isn't a bad grade. Our nursing rating is primarily based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place surprisingly fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. In fact, it performed well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care offered.

Unfortunately, this nursing home received an F for its inspection score. When a nursing home has this poor of an inspection rating, you should look for severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This facility was hit with 10 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we can say is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they created a risk to resident health or safety. Finally, we want to point out that this facility was assessed significant government fines totaling over $100,000. This usually means that a bad track record spanned more than one year.

The next area we assessed is long-term care. We gave it an F for this area, which is a bottom of the barrel grade. For patients seeking a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than the average nursing home. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.