Accura HealthCare of Cascade

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Although this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this nursing home fared very well in our long-term care category. We awarded them a dominant grade of A+ in this area. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning our third category, we gave this facility a score of A- for its short-term care score. This is a dominant rating. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is considered to be a meaningful assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

In the last category we assessed, this nursing home was given a very favorable grade of A- in our nursing category. With this score, the nursing home completed a straight A profile. Our nursing grade is based on numerous factors. The most heavily weighted variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility 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 state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning a patient more often.