Sage Creek Post-Acute

On top of earning a great overall grade, this facility performed even better in the area of inspections which is associated with the facility's recent government inspections. In fact, we gave it a grade of A for that area, which is one of our best scores. Our inspection scores are based on datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had a few 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 tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

Among this facility's other achievements is its top-shelf short-term care grade. We gave them one of our most favorable scores in that category, with a grade of A-. In our short-term care assessment, we attempt to forge a sound barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess a facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Adding to this nursing home's list of strengths, it also received an excellent nursing grade. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. Nursing ratings are mostly based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving a patient at least once a day.

This nursing home's worst category is long-term care, which is the last area we scored. For this area, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. We would like to to point out this potential area of weakness, however, you shouldn't over-emphasize a single category either. Facilities that do not fare well in long-term care often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in a few of the areas of routine medical care we looked at. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. It does not appear that this nursing home submitted information on its vaccination levels. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This was its best feature in this category.