Life Care Center of East Ridge

On top of receiving an elite overall rating, this nursing home earned an A+ inspection score. This grade is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the best complements we can pay to a nursing home. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. You can not do much better than a deficiency-free inspection report.

This top notch facility also excelled in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A+. Only a small group of facilities fared better in this category. In our short-term care assessment, we seek to forge a fair barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we assess the facility's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. There are many subcategories within this grade. Many of the factors reflect the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we assessed was long-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of B. Although this proved to be its poorest category rating, this is nevertheless a quality score. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care ratings. One of the factors we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccines. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home provided data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.