Brookdale San Juan Capistrano

We also found that this facility excelled in our short-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This first-rate facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing rating is based on a number of factors. The most heavily weighted variable is the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place 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 generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also received favorable inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better grades in that area, with a B. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

The final category we looked at was long-term care. This facility received an above average long-term care grade in our assessment, with a grade of B-. Although this wasn't nearly as dominant as several of its other scores, this is nevertheless a decent score in this area. For prospective patients in need of a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccines. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility provided information on its vaccination levels. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.