The Orchards of Cascadia

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this nursing home also received an elite short-term care grade. We awarded them one of our higher scores in that area, with an A-. In determining our short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Adding to its strong performance in other areas, we gave this nursing home an B+ for our nursing rating. Our nursing score is largely associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Moving on to another of this facility's strengths, it also received a very impressive inspection grade. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of B+. Inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area typically have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

The final area we looked at is long-term care. We awarded this facility a D in long-term care, rendering this the nursing home's worst category grade. For long-term care residents, the primary goal 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 patients. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. We were pleased to find that this facility vaccinated 97.27626 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.