The Springs El Dorado

Even though this place's overall grade was horrible, it actually didn't perform quite as poorly in long-term care. In fact, we awarded it a grade of C for that area, which isn't bad. Unfortunately, this was not enough to salvage its otherwise weak profile. In our long-term care score, we focus more on the sheer volume of services provided by a facility, as well as some quality datapoints. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down this facility's vaccination rates. Lastly, this nursing home keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an C. We assessed the levels of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of time the nurses worked with residents, in computing our grade in this area. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this nursing home got dinged a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this metric. This is generally an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning a patient at least once a day.

Unfortunately, this facility only received a grade of D for its short-term care rating, which is not a score to write home about. Short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. With its score in this category, we were not surprised to discover that this facility was well below average in terms of the number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents based on the figures we looked at. The last metric we considered in this area is the number of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its residents returning home.

The final category we assessed was inspections. This facility did not receive positive government inspection reports in recent years. As a result, we had to give it an F here. When a place has this poor of an inspection rating, you should look for severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This facility was hit with 4 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we found is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they caused a risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility also received 7 substantiated complaints in recent years. This is yet another bad sign.