Folsom Care Center

Folsom Care Center is a facility located in Folsom, California, which has a population of 72,180 people. Featuring an overall rating of A-, this facility is one of the higher-rated facilities we assessed. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top 25 percent of all nursing homes in the United States. This nursing home's impressive profile was highlighted by its inspection reports, which you can find in the next paragraph.

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Contributing to its strong assessment, this facility also was given a strong short-term care score, with a grade of A. In crafting these short-term care scores, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. This place increased its rating in this area by offering more than one and a half times as many hours of physical therapy than the average facility. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of nursing homes in the country with 61 percent of its patients returning home. This is a significantly higher rate than most facilities.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our nursing grade analyzes the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. With 4.1 hours of nursing care per patient per day, this nursing home surpassed the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility also excelled in the quality-based metrics we looked at. For example, it fared as well as any facility the state when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We look at these areas as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care offered.

The last area we analyzed turned out to be this facility's weakest area. However, even in its worst category we still awarded it a decent grade of C for long-term care. In calculating our long-term care grades, we look at the assistance with daily living offered to a facility's patients. On top of considering the high volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff at this facility, we also were impressed by the facility's vaccination data. For example, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very respectable. This combination proved to be effective as this nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.28 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.