Ararat Convalescent Hospital

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ for nursing. We weighed the skill-level of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses were with residents, in calculating our grade in this area. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place California in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving residents more often.

To complement its elite accomplishments in other areas, we gave this facility a grade of A for its short-term care score. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. These inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

The last area we scored turned out to be this facility's weakest area. However, even in its worst category we still gave it a respectable grade of B- for our long-term care category. Long-term care grades assess a facility's assistance with daily living instead of the highly skilled therapy or medical services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. After we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. We were pleased to discover that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. This place keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.