Emerald Ridge Rehab and Care Center

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. Its inspection score was far superior to its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave this facility an A+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite insignificant. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

We also gave this nursing home a positive grade in long-term care. This nursing home earned a grade of B in this category, which turns out to be one of our higher scores. Facilities that receive this type of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are well cared for. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 91.78571 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is a few points less than we expected but still a decent percentage. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. Nursing grades are largely associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This place provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this area. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning a patient at least once a day.

Switching gears to the next area, we gave this facility a D in short-term care. This is the nursing home's worst category score. Of course, this grade pulled down the facility's overall grade a bit. Our short-term care scores are likely most important for residents in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. It appears that this facility was below average in multiple staffing metrics we looked at. In fact, it offered fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.