Ridgecrest Community Care Center

The main reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable health inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better grades in that category, with an A. This is a much better grade than the facility's overall score, which was decent but certainly not elite. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. This is what you like to see in this important metric.

This facility also received a positive long-term care score. As a matter of fact, we awarded them a B in this category, which is one of our more favorable scores. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a deadly condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also gave this facility a middle of the pack grade in the area of short-term care, with a B-. In the category of short-term care, we try to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The last area we scored is nursing. We awarded this facility a C in that area. Our nursing rating analyzes quite a few components, but the main one is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This figure is significantly below average. Finally, nursing grades also factor in quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.