Bel Air Care Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility received an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility has earned near flawless health inspections recently. We gave them an A in this category. Inspection scores account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this category usually have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. There are a number of subcategories included in this grade. Many of these datapoints are tied to nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving patients more often.

The final category we assessed ended up being this facility's poorest category. Nevertheless, even in its weakest link we still gave it an acceptable grade of B- in short-term care. Short-term care scores are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a wide scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below average.