Canyon Springs Post-Acute

We would like to point out that this place's long-term care score exceeded its overall score. This facility earned a B in this category. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a dangerous ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility actually earned a solid government inspection report this year as well, with few major dings from the applicable government inspectors. As a result, it received one of our better grades in that category with a B-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. This nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

The next best area we awarded this facility in any area came in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a B-. Short-term care ratings are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its level of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The critical question is whether this also impacted quality of care. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Our last area is nursing, in which we awarded this facility a C in this category. We looked at the skill-level of nurses employed by the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses worked with patients, in computing our rating in this category. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. In fact, it performed well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.