El Monte Convalescent Hospital

This nursing home earned a strong overall grade as described above, but we wanted to point out its excellent long-term care score. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. After we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 98.92473 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a deadly health condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In addition, this nursing home excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an B+. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to be an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning to the category of nursing care, this facility didn't perform quite as well in this area as some of the categories discussed above. Nevertheless, a grade of B- in this category is by no means a bad score. Nursing ratings are tied to nurse staffing levels. This facility provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a somewhat discouraging figure which is well below the national average. Lastly, despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.

Turning to our fourth category, this nursing home was awarded a grade of C in short-term care, which is generally a respectable grade. With our short-term care category, we attempt to create a sound barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess the facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. We weren't able to locate registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this place. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.