East Cascade Retirement Community

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of nursing. We gave it an A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. There are a number of criteria within this grade. Many of the criteria relate to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home also performed favorably in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A-. Not many nursing homes fared more favorably in this area. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

This facility received a good score in the area of inspections as well. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which is one of our better scores. We believe that one of the most important factors in evaluating an inspection report is deficiencies. We especially look at the severity of the deficiencies. This place was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies an immediate threat to patient safety or health. A couple relatively minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

The last area we analyzed is long-term care. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this category, which is a very poor score. This is obviously a significant disappointment. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in long-term care it is typically a bad sign for patient care and it may mean that the nursing home is not as well-staffed with nurses and aids. One of the data points we considered on top of nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to just 88 percent of its residents. Surprisingly, this place was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.