Friendship Village of Tempe

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This exemplary facility also performed remarkably in the area of short-term care, where it received a grade of A+. Only a small group of facilities fared better in this category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to formulate a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents who ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also was strong in the area of long-term care, where it received a grade of A. Only a select group of facilities fared better in this category. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to find this place's vaccination data. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the last category, we awarded this facility a grade of A+ for our nursing score. This rounded out an elite report card. There are a number of data points within this grade. Many of these criteria relate to the quantity of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these data points as good measures of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.