Cottonwood Post-Acute Rehab

In addition to being a quality nursing home overall, this facility really excelled in the area of nursing, where it received an A-. Few facilities performed better in this category. We assessed the qualifications of nurses working for the nursing home, in addition to the number of hours those nurses spent with patients, in computing our rating in this category. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 California 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 system of moving residents even once per day.

Turning to another one of this facility's strengths, it also received a very impressive inspection grade. In fact, inspections proved to be one of its best category grades. In that area, we gave this facility an B+. Inspection scores are tied to many pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not something to panic about.

This facility was awarded a favorable short-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B. In computing our short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The next area we graded is long-term care. For this category, we gave this facility a grade of B-. In a long-term care environment, the primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.