Fullerton Care and Rehabilitation Center

In addition to earning a strong overall grade, this facility also received excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our highest scores in that area, with an A. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an A. Our nursing score includes many subcategories, but the main one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning patients more frequently.

This facility received a favorable short-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our higher grades in that area with a grade of B. Short-term care scores are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents that ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The final category we analyzed was long-term care, in which this nursing home was awarded a grade of B. Although this ended up being its lowest category rating, this is still a quality rating. If you are looking for anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care scores. One of the factors we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccines. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 91.818184 percent of its residents. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.