Sierra Ridge Health and Wellness Suites

In addition to earning a strong overall grade, this facility also received an elite short-term care grade. We gave them one of our higher scores in that area, with an A. In forming our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents that returned home from this facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This facility received high grades in the area of nursing as well. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Our nursing score is largely based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. 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 facility 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 often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also performed at a high level in the area of inspections. It received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. It received one of our highest grades in that category with a grade of B+. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

The next category we scored is long-term care. We awarded this nursing home a solid score in this category, with a C. Even though this wasn't as dominant as some of this facility's other scores, it is still nothing to be ashamed of. Long-term care grades are generally used to assess a nursing home's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services provided by a skilled nursing facility. One of the data points we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home provided information about vaccinations. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.