Brookdale Rancho Mirage

The main reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an excellent inspection grade. Its inspection grade was far superior to its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave this facility an A-. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

In addition, we gave this facility a grade of B in our short-term care category. This happens to be one of our better grades. Our short-term care scores are based in part on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. It doesn't appear that this facility provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 5.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility's next best category was its long-term care score, where it was awarded a C. In calculating our long-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's personal care services. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down this facility's vaccination rates. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next area we rated is nursing. This nursing home was awarded a C in this area. Our nursing rating is mostly associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This figure is far below the national average. Finally, while this place got dinged a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of our quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this statistic.