Ridgecrest Healthcare

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our nursing grade. Our nursing rating is largely tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to the next area, this facility also earned a score of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this area. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 98.74372 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next category we analyzed was short-term care. This nursing home was given a favorable short-term care grade in our assessment, with a grade of B. This nursing home really didn't have any weak links. In calculating our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is considered to be a meaningful measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home submitted data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home.