De Luna Health and Rehabilitation Center

In addition to receiving an elite overall score, this facility also received an A+ inspection grade. This score is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can pay to a nursing home. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. It does not appear that we were able to find deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its elite resume, this nursing home also performed well in our long-term care category. In fact, it received a grade of A for the category. Facilities that excel in long-term care tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility also excelled in the category of short-term care, where it received a score of A-. Only a select group of facilities fared better in this area. Our short-term care grade is generally used to score a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation In order to have highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. 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 category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The last area we analyzed was nursing. In this area, we awarded this nursing home a favorable grade of B. In computing our nursing grades, we weigh both staffing levels and the skill levels of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 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 facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.