Cherry Ridge

This facility received a quality overall score as described above, but we especially want to emphasize its excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded it an impressive grade of A+ in this area. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so well is that it was awarded a very impressive long-term care grade. In fact, long-term care turned out to be its second most favorable category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a score of A. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in this category it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we assessed the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 99.65636 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to the area of nursing care, this was not one of this facility's strong suits. We awarded it a grade of D in this category. Clearly, this facility performed much better in the categories discussed above. Our nursing rating is mostly associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This place averaged just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing ratings. This place fared well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these metrics to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The last area we analyzed was short-term care, which was this facility's least impressive area. We awarded this nursing home a D in this area. Naturally, this grade hurt the nursing home's overall grade a bit. In determining these short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to devise a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.5 percent of its patients returning home. This was well below average.