Brookdale Carmel Valley

To go along with its decent overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for our nursing rating. This score is far more impressive than the facility's overall rating. There are a host of datapoints within this grade. Most of the criteria are tied to nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 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 nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We also want to note that this nursing home received a strong short-term care grade. In fact, it received one of our most favorable grades in that area with a score of A+. With our short-term care rating, we strive to create a sound barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze the nursing home's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this category is the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The next highest area we gave this nursing home in any category came in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a B-. In crafting our long-term care scores, we analyze the facility's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to find that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. This facility also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning the last category of inspections, this facility did not fare well. It received an F in our inspection category. This pulled this facility's overall grade down as we heavily weight this category. When a nursing home has this poor of an inspection grade, you should expect some severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to resident safety. This facility was hit with 3 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we found is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they posed a threat to resident safety or health. Lastly, we need to point out that this nursing home received large government fines recently in excess of $50,000. This usually means that government inspectors became fed up after multiple years of bad government inspections.