Eastridge Nursing Center

We want to point out that this facility outperformed its overall grade in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest scores in this area with an A. Inspection ratings account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also performed well in the area of long-term care. For this reason, we gave it a score of A- in that category, which is one of our most impressive grades. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly can be a deadly health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Next we wanted to quickly point out one of this facility's major weaknesses. In the area of nursing care, we gave this nursing home a lowly grade of F. Our nursing rating includes quite a few components, however, the most important one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility averaged a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This statistic is significantly below average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing scores. This facility fared well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

Switching gears to the final category, this facility really didn't perform very well. With a very poor grade of F in short-term care, this was its poorest category grade. With our short-term care rating, we strive to create a fair measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we assess a facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this place provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other facilities. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who eventually returned home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.