The Cedars at Mease Life

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in long-term care, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. One of the datapoints we considered after nurse's aid hours is vaccines. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 96.178345 percent of its patients. This is a reliable method to minimize negative health outcomes for the senior population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this nursing home an A+. In determining our nursing ratings, we analyze both staffing levels and the training levels of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Compounding its high-end profile, this facility also was awarded a strong short-term care score, with a score of A. In crafting these short-term care ratings, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to devise a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Finally, this nursing home also received excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best scores in the area of inspections, with an elite grade of A. Few facilities received an A- or better in all four categories. Our inspection ratings are tied to data points located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had some 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 inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.