The Cedars of Chapel Hill

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes fared as well in this area. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive accomplishments in other areas, we awarded this facility a grade of A- for its long-term care grade. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are kept in good health. On the whole this looks like a solid option for long-term care.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this area. The nursing grade assesses several datapoints, many of which are based on nursing hours. This nursing home provides 0 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 place the nation 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 having a policy of moving residents even once per day.

The final category we looked at proved to be this nursing home's weakest area. However, even in its weakest link we still awarded it a respectable grade of C for our short-term care category. Short-term care scores are based on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility submitted information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 3.7 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.