Silver Ridge Healthcare Center

To go along with its decent overall score, we awarded this facility an A- for its inspection grade. This score is far better than the facility's overall score. Inspection scores account for several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this category typically have few severe deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

We also wanted to point out that this nursing home received a great nursing grade. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Nursing grades are primarily tied to a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facilities third best category was short-term care. We gave it a B- in this area. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this area. In forming these short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to create a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who returned home from this facility. We found that 4.3 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below average.

The last category we graded was long-term care, which turned out to be this nursing home's least impressive category. We gave it an F for this category, which is certainly a major disappointment. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.98734 percent of its residents, which is better than the majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.