Bella Terra Cedar City

To pair with a great overall score, we gave this facility an A for inspections. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This particular nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was awarded a favorable short-term care grade. Indeed, we gave it an above average score of B+ in this area. In calculating these short-term care scores, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to formulate a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 5.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Turning to another strength for this facility, we gave them one of our more positive grades in our long-term care category as well, with a grade of B+. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 94.071144 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The last category we assessed is nursing, in which this nursing home was awarded a grade of B. This actually is this nursing home's worst category. A nursing home could be doing a lot worse when it's poorest score still is better than most nursing homes. Our nursing category weighs several factors, most of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home 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 generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.