Bel-Air Nursing and Rehab Center

To pair with its favorable overall grade, we awarded this place an A+ for our inspection category. Our inspection scores are tied to pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In that area, we awarded this nursing home an A. In calculating our nursing grades, we look at both staffing levels and the training levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Compounding its high-end profile, this facility also received a superb short-term care score, with a score of A. In the area of short-term care, we try to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of patients who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The final category we scored was long-term care, where this facility was given a B+. This topped off a very impressive report card. Not many facilities received a B+ or better in each of our categories. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.