Chowchilla Memorial Healthcare District

In addition to receiving a strong overall score, this facility fared well in long-term care. We awarded it an A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. When facilities receive this type of grade in this category it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. One of the datapoints we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This is a proven method to avoid negative health outcomes for the nursing home population. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this nursing home also received favorable short-term care scores in our assessment. Indeed, we gave them one of our better grades in that category, with a score of B. In our short-term care assessment, we strive to forge a meaningful measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the nursing home's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. It does not appear that this nursing home provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. While this wasn't quite as good as some of its other category grades, this isn't a bad score either. Nursing ratings are largely tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a relatively low total compared to most facilities. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures. While this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared well in this metric. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of turning a resident at least once a day.

Finally, we looked at this nursing home's inspection grade This did not end up being one of this facility's better grades. We gave it a grade of C in this category. This isn't a horrible score in this category. It simply wasn't as favorable as some of this facility's other grades. Our inspection ratings are based on several data points located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important item to look for on these reports. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to resident safety. This facility was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were in categories G through L. This indicates that this facility dodged the more serious classes of deficiencies. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.