Clear Creek Care Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our nursing rating. Our nursing rating focuses on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This nursing home provided 3.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. At least one quarter of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. This is a high ratio of skilled nursing care. In calculating our nursing grades, we apply additional weight to care provided by more highly trained nurses such as registered nurses. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Colorado in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving residents even once per day.

This nursing home also was strong in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A. Few facilities received a better grade in this area. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. Once we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 98.067635 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a deadly condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings are based on many pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category typically have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. 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.

Turning to our fourth category, this nursing home also performed admirably in the short-term care category. We awarded it a grade of A- in this category. This wrapped up truly elite profile. In the category of short-term care, we strive to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. This nursing home excelled in the two key staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it provided more care from physical therapists and registered nurses than a typical nursing home. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return home from this facility. We found that it performed better than most nursing homes in this area with 54.7 percent of its residents able to return home.