Clifford Chester Sims State Veterans Nursing Home

In addition to being an elite nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A+. Very few places fared as well in this area. Inspection ratings are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Nursing scores are mostly tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home 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 often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Contributing to its first-rate profile, this facility also received a superb long-term care score, with a score of A. Facilities that do well in this category typically provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize unnecessary deaths for the senior population. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning to the final area, this nursing home was awarded an excellent short-term care rating. We gave it a grade of A in this area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. Short-term care grades are generally employed to assess a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To have highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to feature higher levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.