Delano Regional Medical Center

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections are nearly flawless. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. You can't do much better than a deficiency-free inspection report.

Adding to this nursing home's list of strengths, it also received an excellent nursing grade. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Nursing grades are primarily associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility is also strong in the area of long-term care, where it was given a grade of B. It performed more favorably than most facilities in this area. Facilities that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this facility 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 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final category we graded is short-term care. This nursing home was given an above average short-term care rating in our assessment, with a grade of B-. Even though this is not quite as elite as many of its other scores, this remains an acceptable score in that area. In determining our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well below the national average.