Pillar of Cedar Valley

While we were not high on this nursing home overall, we awarded it a B- in nursing. This is more respectable than the facility's overall score. There are a host of criteria within this category. Many of these factors are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Finally, nursing scores also factor in quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

We actually gave this facility a very solid score in the area of inspections as well. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. This facility was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe. This indicates that the government inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to resident safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This facility was given its third best category grade in the category of short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a B- in this area, which is a reasonably acceptable score. In the area of short-term care, we strive to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.

The final area we assessed was long-term care, which ended up being this facility's least impressive category. We gave this nursing home a D in that area. When facilities receive this kind of score in long-term care it is typically a bad sign for patient care and it may indicate that the facility is not as well-staffed. One of the statistics we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 92.24806 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this place was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.