Copper Ridge Health Care

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this facility excelled in inspections, where it earned an A. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor dings are not necessarily the end of the world.

We also would like to alert you to the fact that this facility was awarded a high-end grade of A- in our short-term care area. In crafting these short-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

Turning to another strength for this nursing home, we awarded them one of our more positive scores in our long-term care category as well, with a B+. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 99.27798 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a life threatening ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The last area we looked at is nursing. This nursing home received a very good nursing grade in our assessment, with a B. Even though this wasn't as good as some of its other scores, this remains one of our more impressive scores in this area. When computing our nursing scores, we look at both staffing levels and the training levels of the nurses. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning residents even once per day.