Brookdale San Juan Capistrano

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our long-term care category. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility also was superb in the area of short-term care, where it received a score of A. Only a select group of nursing homes performed better in this category. In the area of short-term care, we seek to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 6.2 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. In computing our nursing ratings, we assess both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Finally, this nursing home also earned top notch inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our better grades in that area, with a B+. Inspection ratings are tied to many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This nursing home received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to create an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.