Desert Terrace Healthcare Center

To pair with its decent overall score, we gave this facility a grade of A- for our inspections rating. This score is far more impressive than its overall rating. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

Another one of this facility's better category scores was in the category of short-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B. In the category of short-term care, we seek to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this nursing home provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

We gave this facility just a D for our long-term care rating. This is not a very good score. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 91.954025 percent of its residents, which is somewhat below what we anticipated. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually decent at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.

The final area we looked at was nursing, ended up being this facility's worst category. We gave this facility a D in this area. Our nursing grade is primarily associated with a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. Unfortunately, this place also had terrible marks in some of the quality-based metrics to go along with its weak nursing hours. We looked at the percent of residents suffering pressure ulcers and we were quite disappointed. This place was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this metric.