Apple Valley Center

It should also be noted that this place's long-term care score outpaced its overall grade. We awarded it a grade of B+ for its long-term care grade, which is one of our better scores. This propped up its overall score. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.982185 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Additionally, we gave this nursing home a B+ in our short-term care category. This is one of our more impressive grades. In the category of short-term care, we seek to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B in that category, which is one of our better scores. Our nursing grade includes a handful of factors, many of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving a patient at least once a day.

In our last category, inspections proved to be this facility's weakest link. It received a score of C in this category. Inspection scores relate to a facility's inspections. These inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.