Croatan Ridge Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

On top of faring well overall, this facility also received a nearly flawless inspection report. Consequently, it earned one of our best scores in that category with an A+. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among this nursing home's other strengths is its dominant short-term care score. It received one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a score of A-. Short-term care grades are generally used to assess a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to provide high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to return home from the facility. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Additionally, this facility also was given favorable long-term care grades in our assessment. Indeed, we awarded it one of our higher grades in that category, with a score of B+. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia can be a dangerous illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Lastly, this place 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 category we looked at was nursing, where this facility was awarded a C. Although this wound up being its weakest category grade, this is still not a terrible score. Nursing ratings are based largely on levels of nurse staffing. This place averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, which is a very low figure. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. While this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed well in this subcategory. This is often a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving residents more frequently.