Arbor Ridge Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center

On top of faring well overall, this nursing home also earned nearly flawless government inspections. As a result, it earned one of our best scores in that category with an A+. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS did not deem 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.

We also would like to emphasize the fact that this facility was given an impressive score of A- in our long-term care category. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is often a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing rating focuses on the facility's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning residents more frequently.

Turning to our last category, this nursing home was given a highly favorable short-term care score. We gave it a B+ in this area, finishing off one of our more impressive report cards. In crafting our short-term care scores, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home.