Christian Heights Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really fared well in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be quite minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received a strong long-term care score. Indeed, we awarded it one of our best grades in that area with a score of A-. For long-term care residents, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 87.5 percent of its patients. This is somewhat below what we expected but still a respectable percentage. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, at least this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of C. When calculating our nursing grades, we weigh both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a relatively low total compared with most nursing homes. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. While this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality metrics. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this area. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving residents more frequently.

This facility's weakest category is short-term care, which is the final area we scored. We gave it a lowly F for this area. Even with several decent grades in other categories, this grade is still of a concern so we wanted to draw your attention to it. Short-term care ratings are critical for individuals needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this facility offers less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.