El Monte Convalescent Hospital

On top of its strong overall score, we gave this facility an impressive grade of A for our long-term care rating. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.41521 percent of its residents, which is significantly 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. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Nursing ratings are tied to quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning residents even once per day.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+ for our inspections rating. Inspection grades weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The last category we looked at is short-term care, in which this nursing home received a B. This actually proved to be this nursing home's weakest category. A facility could be doing a lot worse when their poorest score still beats out most other nursing homes. Short-term care scores are based on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a wide range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.