Chaparral House

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this place also performed well in inspections, where it earned an A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our inspection scores are based on many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple relatively minor dings are not something to panic about.

Contributing to its high-end profile, this nursing home also was given a superb short-term care score, with a score of A. In computing our short-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 6.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A- in our nursing category. Nursing grades are based largely on quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home averages 0.5 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Moving on to the final category, we gave this nursing home a D for long-term care. This was the nursing home's worst category rating. Nevertheless, you should not focus exclusively a single poor grade. Our long-term care scores are pivotal for individuals needing non-healthcare services such as personal care. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.