Desert Haven Care Center

One of the reasons this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned a favorable inspection grade. In this category, we gave this facility a B+. Our inspection scores are tied to items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

Additionally, we awarded this nursing home a B in our long-term care category. This is one of our better grades. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is better than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of C in this category. Our nursing score consists of a handful of components, most of which are based on nursing hours. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, although this place got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in a few of our quality metrics. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this metric.

The last category we rated was short-term care, which turned out to be this nursing home's worst category. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this area, which is obviously very concerning. In the area of short-term care, we strive to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients that were able to return home from this nursing home. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.