Desert Cove Nursing Center

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our short-term care category. Our short-term care scores are critical for patients requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. 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 were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home also was strong in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a score of A-. Only a select group of facilities received a better grade in this category. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+ for our inspections rating. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to be an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In our last area, this facility also was awarded an excellent nursing grade, with a B+. This completed an elite profile. When calculating a facility's nursing rating, we look at the number of hours nurses spend with patients and the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.