Clearwater of Cascadia

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. Sadly, this place received a category L deficiency, which is not what we expected based on its inspection score. This category of deficiency means the government inspectors identified a widespread deficiency putting resident safety or health in imminent danger. Any serious deficiency is a major concern. In spite of this major red flag, other aspects of this facility's inspection report gave us some hope.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. This proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility an A. The nursing grade consists of several datapoints, but the main consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving a resident more often.

This nursing home is also above average in the category of long-term care, where it was given a score of B. It performed more favorably than most facilities in this category. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours is vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a great way to minimize unnecessary deaths for the elderly population. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final area we assessed was short-term care, where this facility was awarded a grade of B-. Although this turned out to be its lowest category rating, this is still not the end of the world. In the area of short-term care, we seek to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually well below the national average.