Ridgecrest Village

In addition to being a quality nursing home overall, this facility really excelled in nursing, where it received an A. When determining our nursing grades, we look at both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place 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 typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. Our inspection grades are based on datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few relatively minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

This facility received its next most favorable category score in the category of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this category, which is an acceptable grade. Short-term care scores are based on the nursing home's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Switching gears to the next category, we awarded this facility a grade of D for long-term care. This was the nursing home's weakest category score. Naturally, this grade hurt the nursing home's overall profile a bit. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care ratings. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.