Foothills Rehabilitation Center

To go along with a favorable overall score, we gave this facility an A+ for inspections. Inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category generally have few of these severe deficiencies. This facility was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies an imminent risk to patient health or safety. A couple minor dings are not necessarily the end of the world.

This nursing home also received a top-shelf short-term care grade. Indeed, this is this facility's second strongest category grade. In that category, this facility received a score of A-. Our short-term care grades are important for individuals in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing. This includes a broad scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

We also would like to alert you to the fact that this facility was awarded an elite score of A- in our long-term care category. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. One of the datapoints we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccines. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This is a great way to avoid unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the elderly population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In the last category we looked at, this nursing home was given an impressive grade grade of B+ in our nursing category. With this grade, the nursing home topped off a very strong report card. Nursing ratings are primarily associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.