Desert Cove Nursing Center

In addition to being a quality nursing home overall, this facility really excelled in the category of short-term care, where it earned an A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. In forming these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to devise a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this area is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Another strong feature for this nursing home is that it was given an above average long-term care score. Indeed, this wound up being its second best category score. In that area, we awarded this facility a B+. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this place 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 an impressively low figure.

Turning to another of this nursing home's strengths, it also earned a very impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections proved to be one of its best category grades. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The next area we scored is nursing. This nursing home was awarded an above average nursing score in our assessment, with a grade of B. This facility really doesn't have any weak grades. There are numerous data points within this category. Many of these criteria are tied to staffing levels. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home 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 many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.