Highland Ridge Rehab Center

Although we didn't grade this facility favorably overall, we did give it an excellent score in the area of inspections, where it received an A. Our inspection grades are tied to pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important thing to look for on these inspections. Most importantly, you should avoid facilities with severe deficiencies associated with endangerment of patients. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

This facility's short-term care grade turns out to be one of its respectable scores. The facility was given a grade of C in this category. In determining these short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the typical facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. It performed much better in this area with 59 percent of its patients returning home. For most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

Sadly, we gave this facility an F for its long-term care grade. For residents seeking a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 95.34161 percent of its residents, which is more than the average nursing home. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 1.18 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.

Switching gears to the next category, this nursing home really didn't perform well in this area either. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in nursing, this is really as bad as it gets. Our nursing score is based on many components, however, the most important one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is below the national average. To go along with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this nursing home also did not perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average facility.