The Ridge Post Acute

On top of being a quality nursing home overall, this facility really excelled in nursing, where it received an A. In determining a facility's nursing score, we consider the number of hours nurses are caring for residents as well as the skill levels of the nurses. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place 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 typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We also wanted to emphasize this facility's nearly flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an B+ in this area. Our inspection scores are based on many pieces of information found on the a nursing home's government inspections. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the 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 relatively minor dings aren't necessarily something to panic about.

This nursing home is also above average in the category of long-term care, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this area. Facilities that receive this type of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are kept in good health. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Our next category is short-term care, in which we awarded this facility a grade of C in this area. In calculating our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This score is generally a useful assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home.