Brookdale Palmer Ranch

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home excelled in our shot-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. In computing our short-term care ratings, we size up the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This grade is frequently a meaningful assessment of the facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 7.2 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

In addition, this nursing home also received a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it earned one of our best grades in that category with a score of A. Our inspection grades account for several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area tend to have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this facility also received favorable long-term care grades in our assessment. Indeed, we awarded it one of our more favorable scores in that area, with a score of B+. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The last category we analyzed is nursing, in which this nursing home was awarded a grade of B-. This actually proved to be this nursing home's weakest area. This is still not the end of the world. Our nursing rating considers many subcategories. The most important one is the number of hours nurses spend with residents. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a relatively low total compared with most other facilities. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it did well in this metric. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of turning residents more often.