Cherokee Trails Nursing Home

While we graded this nursing home incredibly poorly overall, it received a decent short-term care score this year. We gave it a C in that category. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we look at a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is typically a solid assessment of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

We were also stunned to discover that this facility received a somewhat respectable long-term care grade in our assessment. We gave it a grade of C in that category. For patients in need of a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 97.05882 percent of its residents, which is higher than the average nursing home. This facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility's next best category was nursing, but even there it received a grade of just D. This is still a well below average grade. The nursing grade weighs several datapoints. The most heavily weighted factor is the amount of time nurses spend with residents. With only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day, this nursing home's nurse staffing levels were far below average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home fared well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these datapoints to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care.

Turning the final category of inspections, this nursing home had an abysmal showing. Sadly, it received an F in our inspection rating. This happens to be our most heavily weighted category in our scoring system. You should pay close attention to any deficiencies on a facility's inspection reports when it receives this poor of an inspection rating. We would scrutinize the severity of those deficiencies. This nursing home was assessed 7 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we found is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they caused a risk to resident safety or health. Finally, CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.