Wegman Family Cottages at Park Ridge Living Center

On top of being an elite nursing home overall, this facility performed well in our inspections category, where it earned a grade of A+. Few facilities performed as well in this category. Our inspection scores are tied to many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home fared very well in our long-term care rating. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this area. For patients in need of a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. After looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 89.71963 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be a few points below what we expected but still a decent figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing rating focuses on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of skill of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 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 generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to our final category, this facility was awarded a strong short-term care score. In fact, we gave it an A in this category, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. Our short-term care grades are based in part on a facility's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a vast spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.