Colusa Medical Center - Snf

One of the reasons this turned out to be a decent nursing home is it earned a favorable inspection grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a B+. Inspection grades account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area typically have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

We also wanted to note that this nursing home earned an impressive grade of B in our nursing category. Nursing grades are mostly associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a resident at least once a day.

This facility's next best area ended up being short-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of C. In determining these short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Unfortunately, we found that this facility provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The key is determining what bearing this had on quality of care. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 2.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The final category we graded is long-term care. It received a lowly F for this category, which is a bottom of the barrel grade. This is obviously a significant disappointment. Facilities that don't fare well in this category typically are not as well-staffed and are lagging in a few of the areas of routine healthcare services we assessed. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccinations. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to a relatively low 75 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.