Persimmon Ridge Rehabilitation Centre

This facility received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to emphasize its excellent health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this category. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't 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 always a good sign.

This facility also was given a positive long-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded them a grade of B+ in that area, which is one of our more favorable scores. Facilities that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home's second lowest score is short-term care, where it received just a D in that category. This is a relatively poor score. In computing our short-term care scores, we assess a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is more often than not a fair measure of the facility's rehabilitation services. With a score in this range in this category, we weren't surprised to find this facility was well below average in many staffing metrics we assess. The nursing home offered substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most nursing homes. The last measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 4.3 percent of its patients returning home.

Switching gears to our next category, this facility really did not fare well. With a poor grade of F in nursing, this was this nursing home's worst category. Our nursing score focuses on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of training of the nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This place offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. In addition to ranking below average in nursing hours per resident, this place also had poor scores in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of patients sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This place was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in both of these data points. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. These scores pulled down this facility's nursing grade significantly.