Buena Park Nursing Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category tend to have very few severe deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

This facility performed well in the category of short-term care. Indeed, we awarded it a score of A- for that category, which is one of our higher grades. With our short-term care category, we endeavor to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home 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. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Turning to the third area, this nursing home also received a grade of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this area. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours is vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to avoid negative health outcomes for the nursing home population. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next category we assessed was nursing. We awarded this facility one of our higher grades in that category, with a grade of B. This facility turned out to be very solid in all areas we analyzed. Our nursing grade weighs a handful of data points, most of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a resident more often.