Cheyenne Reg Medical Center Transitional Care Unit

One of the reasons this place turned out to be a quality nursing home is it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this critical category. Our inspection grades are based on datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was given an A+ for its short-term care score. In calculating our short-term care scores, we assess a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is considered to be a fair measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. This place is significantly above average in terms of its quantity of both registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents. It offered approximately 50% more care per patient from both of these groups of skilled professionals than the typical nursing home provided. The final item we assessed in this area is the number of residents who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Wyoming in this area with 73.6 percent of its patients returning home. With most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

The third area we looked at was long-term care. Contributing to its impressive profile, this nursing home also excelled in this area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A for the category. For long-term care residents, the primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In our final category, we gave this nursing home an A+ for its nursing grade. This completed a very favorable profile. Our nursing rating analyzes the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of the nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This facility provided 11.1 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This was one of the highest figures we found. In addition, we found that a significant portion of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. In addition to providing impressive levels of care, this place also excelled in the quality measures we assessed. For example, it performed as well as any facility in the country when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We look at these metrics as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care being provided.