Ridgewood Specialty Care

While this facility's overall grade was decent, it really fared well in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our best scores. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category usually have few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. Overall, this is still a solid inspection report, but we'd always recommend looking into any deficiencies you find troubling.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an B. There are a host of subcategories within this grade. Many of the datapoints reflect the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning patients at least once a day.

This nursing home's third most favorable category is short-term care. We awarded it a grade of B- in this area. This is basically a middle of the pack grade in this area. Short-term care grades are important for prospective residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below the national average.

The next category we rated is long-term care. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this area, which is a very poor grade. This is clearly a major concern. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category may not provide the kind of consistent around the clock care that some other nursing homes provide. After considering the amount of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. Candidly, we were a bit concerned this facility vaccinated only 80.27211 percent of its patients for pneumonia. To our surprise, this facility was actually decent at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.