Sunny Ridge

While this place's overall grade was not a highlight, it received a somewhat respectable score in the area of inspections. We awarded it a B- for this category, which is not bad. Inspection grades are based on many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these reports. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to resident safety. This nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We would not recommend this facility under any circumstance.

We also awarded this facility a grade of B- for our nursing rating. Our nursing grade is largely tied to the nursing home's nurse staffing. This facility averages just 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident each day, which is not an impressive total. Finally, despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.

This facility was given its next best category grade in the category of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this area, which is a respectable grade. Our short-term care grade is often employed to judge a facility's rehabilitation services In order to offer high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature higher levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its level of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. The question is whether this adversely impacted quality of care. The last metric we looked at in this area is the number of patients that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

The final category we graded was long-term care. This facility received a B- for this area. For long-term care residents, the nursing home's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.