El Dorado Care and Rehab

This facility's overall score was propped up by the fact that it has received favorable government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category, with a grade of B+. This is a notably better grade than the nursing home's overall grade. Inspection grades are tied to pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we gave this nursing home an B-. We scrutinized the qualifications of nurses at the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses worked with residents, in computing our rating in this category. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, nursing scores also factor in quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

This facilities third most favorable area was short-term care. We gave it a grade of B- in this category. This is essentially a middle of the road grade in this area. Our short-term care scores are vital for residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. The last statistic we looked at in this category is the number of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below the national average.

This nursing home's least impressive area was long-term care, which is the final category we analyzed. In this category, we awarded this nursing home a D. For residents in need of a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is more than most nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.