Bel Aire Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is simply as good as it gets in this very important category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be quite minor. We weren't able to track down deficiency counts for this nursing home. We wish we had more data for this nursing home. Without all of the deficiency related data, it ended up being a challenge to really grade this nursing home in this area.

Among the reasons we graded this nursing home so well is that it was given a strong short-term care grade. In fact, short-term care turned out to be its second most favorable category grade. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A-. Short-term care ratings are critical for people requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a vast scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the number of patients that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Turning to the category of nursing care, this facility didn't perform quite as well in this area as some of the categories discussed above. Nevertheless, a grade of B- in this category is by no means a bad score. Our nursing score includes many components, many of which are associated with levels of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place surprisingly excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it performed well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

Turning to our last category, this facility received an acceptable long-term care grade. While this isn't nearly as elite as several of its other scores, this is still not a terrible score. In computing our long-term care grades, we analyze the facility's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Fortunately, this facility gave the vaccine to 95.90643 percent of its patients, which is a very respectable percentage. This facility also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.