Cherokee Specialty Care

This nursing home received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to emphasize its nearly flawless health inspection reports in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A- in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

The next best category we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of B-. Our long-term care ratings are more meaningful for folks requiring more conventional services associated with personal care. After we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. Candidly, we were a bit worried that this nursing home vaccinated a relatively low 86.85715 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Nevertheless, this facility excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. We analyzed the skill-level of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the quantity of time the nurses worked with residents, in calculating our rating in this category. This place provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a somewhat discouraging figure which is well below the national average. Finally, nursing scores also consider quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually an indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses to assist its residents.

This nursing home's worst category is short-term care, which is the final category we assessed. In this area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of just D. In determining our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize a facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is frequently a solid measure of a facility's rehabilitation. As you might expect, we found that this place offers substantially less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than a typical facility. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely wasn't a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.