Desert Cove Nursing Center

In addition to being a quality nursing home overall, this place also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Inspection ratings account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

Contributing to this facility's list of accomplishments, it also was awarded a very favorable short-term care score. We awarded them an elite strong of A- in this area. Our short-term care grades are critical for individuals needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a broad spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to find information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The last measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 5.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. Our nursing rating is mostly tied to the nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The last area we assessed was long-term care. This facility received a strong long-term care grade this year, with a B-. Even though this wasn't nearly as good as several of its other grades, this is still a respectable grade in that area. Our long-term care grade assesses a facility's personal care instead of the skilled nursing and medical services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 99.431816 percent of its patients, which is better than the majority of nursing homes. This facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.