Arcadia Health Care Center

This nursing home's best category grade came in the area of government inspections. In this area, we gave this nursing home a grade of B. It actually outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Inspection grades weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area generally have few severe deficiencies. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

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. The nursing grade weighs many datapoints, however, the most important consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we assessed is long-term care. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B. It actually outperformed most facilities in this area. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a dangerous condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The final area we assessed was short-term care. We gave this facility a C in this category. Our short-term care grade is generally used to grade a facility's rehabilitation services. To provide high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.