Brookdale Santa Catalina

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ short-term care grade. In forming these short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Inspection scores are tied to datapoints found on the a nursing home's inspections. Facilities that excel in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you 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.

Building on its first-rate resume, this facility also was awarded a dominant long-term care grade, with a score of A-. When facilities receive this kind of score in this category it is typically a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. One of the datapoints we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the elderly population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In the last category, this facility also was awarded a first-rate nursing rating, with an A-. This wrapped up a very favorable report card. Our nursing rating considers many factors. The most important factor is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 0.4 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 many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.