Clifford Chester Sims State Veterans Nursing Home

In addition to being a great facility overall, it also received A+ inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection scores weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this area generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. 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.

In addition, this facility received superb marks in the area of long-term care. For this reason, it received one of our best scores in that category with a score of A+. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are kept in good health. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 99.319725 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a deadly condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Turning our next category, we gave this facility a grade of A for its short-term care score. This is a superb grade. With our short-term care grade, we seek to create a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we assess the facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Moving on to our final area, this nursing home also performed admirably in our nursing category. We gave it an A for that area. This rounded out truly elite report card. The nursing grade consists of many data points, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 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 facility 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 many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.