Courtyard Care Center

This nursing home received a solid overall grade as described above, but it really excelled in nursing care, with an impressive grade of A- in this category. Nursing ratings are primarily tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility California in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a patient at least once a day.

This facility also earned a strong inspection grade. Inspection grades are based on the nursing home's recent health inspections. We awarded this nursing home an above average grade of B in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively minor. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This means that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident safety or health. A few relatively minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

We also awarded this facility a respectable score in the area of short-term care, with a grade of B-. Our short-term care ratings are believed to be more important for patients in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 4.3 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

Moving on to the final area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D for our long-term care category. This was the nursing home's weakest category score. Naturally, this grade pulled down the nursing home's overall grade to a certain degree. In a long-term care setting, the facility's 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 residents. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is more than most nursing homes. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.