Downey Care Center

Even though we didn't rate this facility favorably overall, we want to point out its relatively favorable long-term care grade this year. We gave it a B in this area, which was much better than its overall grade. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. 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 only 0.05 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility an B-. There are many factors included in this grade. Most of these criteria relate to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Lastly, our nursing scores also factor in quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this place actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses to assist its residents.

This facility earned mediocre government inspections in recent years. We awarded them a C in this category. Our inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. This facility had 10 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to find that none were in category J, K or L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to place resident safety or health in imminent harm or jeopardy. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

The final area we analyzed is short-term care. This facility received a grade of C for the category. In calculating our short-term care scores, we assess a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is more often than not a fair assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its level of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 4.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below average.