Friends Homes West

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our inspection grades are tied to several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This nursing home was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

On the list of its many dominant scores, this nursing home was given a top-shelf short-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in this area. Our short-term care ratings are vital for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. The nursing rating includes several factors. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. This nursing home averages 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving residents more often.

Switching gears to our final category, this facility also performed well in our long-term care category. We gave it a grade of A in that area. This completed truly elite report card. Facilities that receive this type of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. Once we assessed the volume of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.