Park Ridge Care Center

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. In fact, its inspection score was far better than its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to resident safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

We also gave this facility an impressive grade in long-term care. This facility received a B+ in this area, which turns out to be one of our more impressive scores. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are well cared for. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 99.17355 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning to the category of short-term care, this nursing home received a grade of just D in that area. In determining our short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This score is considered to be a useful measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we looked at the number of residents that were able to return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.

This nursing home's worst category is nursing, which is the final category we scored. For this category, we gave this facility a D. Our nursing grade is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the amount of time spent with residents. With a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day, this place's nurse staffing levels were significantly below average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing ratings. This facility performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.