Forest Hill

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it earned an A+ short-term care grade. This is as good as it gets in this area. Our short-term care ratings are presumably more important for people in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of skilled nursing. This includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility an A. There are many datapoints included in this grade. Many of the datapoints reflect nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home California in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning residents more often.

In addition, this facility also earned a nearly flawless government inspection report. As a result, it earned one of our best grades in that category with an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Switching gears to the next category, this nursing home was awarded an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in that area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 94.23077 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.