Eagle Cliff Manor

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection grade. In fact, its inspection score was far better than its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category generally have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

We also gave this facility a middle of the road grade in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a B-. Our short-term care grades are vital for residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this place provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. The more important thing is determining what effect this had on the quality of care. The last item we considered in this category is the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that just 6.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below the national average.

The next most favorable area we gave this nursing home in any category came in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of C. In determining our long-term care scores, we analyze the personal care offered to the facility's patients. On top of considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Candidly, we were a bit concerned this facility gave the vaccine to only 85.826775 percent of its residents. Nevertheless, this nursing home excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Moving on to our last area, we gave this facility a grade of D for our nursing category. This is the facility's worst category rating. When calculating a facility's nursing score, we look at the quantity of hours nurses are caring for residents and the level of skill of those nurses. This place provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is an alarmingly low total. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing scores. This nursing home performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these statistics to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.