Gold Country Health Center
4301 Golden Center Drive, Placerville CA 95667 · (530) 621-1100 · 66.76% estimated occupancy 1Updated: Aug 1, 2020 · By Nick Lata
Gold Country Health Center is one of four nursing homes in Placerville, California. Featuring an overall grade of B-, this is a middle of the pack nursing home. As far as we can see, this nursing home should be a good fit for quite a few people. This facility is stronger in some categories than others, but it did not have any bad scores in any of our major categories. More information about these categories can be found below.
Additional Details:
Accepts Medicare 1 :
Accepts Medicaid 1 : 68 Beds
CCRC :
Non profit - Other
Resident Council:
Family Council:
Medical Staff Hours Per Patient (2019)
Facility Inspections
The primary reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable government inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our higher grades in that area, with an A-. This is a notably better score than the place's overall grade, which was decent but not in the elite range. Our inspection grades weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category generally have few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.
Short-term Care Quality
This nursing home also was given a strong short-term care grade. As a matter of fact, we gave them a grade of B+ in this area, which is one of our more favorable scores. Our short-term care grade is typically employed to grade a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to have highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to feature higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This proved to be a real strength for this facility. This place outperformed the vast majority of facilities in the country with 64.3 percent of its residents returning home. This is a significantly higher rate than most facilities.
Nurse Quality
Another reason we rated this facility so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is as good as it gets in this area. Nursing grades are tied to quantity of nursing care available. This facility provides an incredible 4.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is much more care than what is offered by most nursing homes. Finally, this place also excelled in the quality-based metrics we assessed. For example, it fared as well as any nursing home the country in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We look at these areas as good measures of the quality of nursing care offered.
Long-term Care Quality
Our next area is long-term care, in which we gave this nursing home a grade of C in that category. For long-term care residents, the nursing home's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. On top of offering above average levels of nursing care and other staffing, this nursing home gave the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This percentage is better than the majority of nursing homes. This combination proved to be successful as this nursing home keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.49 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.
Overall Rating Over Time
Compared to national and state averages across all facilities.
Gold Country Health Center Quality Metrics
Minimizes Pressure Ulcers
This is the percentage of residents that suffered from a pressure ulcer. Pressure ulcers, also referred to as bed sores, are routinely caused by residents not being moved frequently enough. Better nursing protocols can minimize the number of pressure ulcers sustained by residents in a nursing home.
Percent of Patients with Pressure Ulcers
Lower is Better
Minimizes Serious Falls
This tells you the percentage of long-term residents that had a fall which caused major injury. This is one of the statistics we use in calculating our nursing scores.
Percent of Patients with Serious Falls
Lower is Better
Minimizes Urinary Tract Infections
This datapoint indicates the percent of long-term stay patients that have had a urinary tract infection. UTI's could be an indicator of lower quality nursing care. Nevertheless, this statistic could also be misleading for some nursing homes due to inconsistent reporting standards for UTI's.
Percent of Patients with UTIs
Lower is Better
Appropriately Uses Anti-Psychotic Medication
This indicates the percent of patients who were prescribed antipsychotic medications. While antipsychotic medications may be vital to many residents, it is important to ensure these drugs are being used only where medically required. In limited cases, excessive reliance on these medications may suggest a nursing home is using these medications to subdue residents.
Percent of Patients
Lower is Better
Appropriately Uses Anti-Anxiety Medication
This metric tells you the percentage of long-term patients taking antianxiety medications.
Percent of Patients
Lower is Better
Managing Depression Among Residents
This is the percentage of patients who are demonstrating signs of depression. High rates of depression could imply worse patient care.
Percent of Patients
Lower is Better
Appropriate Vaccine Usage
This datapoint measures the percentage of long-term stay residents who were given the pneumonia and flu vaccines. Respiratory viruses can be deadly for seniors, making these vaccines important for resident well-being.
Percent of Patients
Higher is Better
Residents Maintain Autonomy
This is a measure of the percentage of long-term residents who required increased assistance with activities of daily living over time. Activities of daily living include activities such as dressing and bathing. Some experts would argue that this is a reliable measure of a resident's well-being.
Percentage of Patients
Lower is Better
Ability to Keep Residents Mobile
This metric is a measure of the percentage of long-term care patients that retained mobility levels. Some experts would argue that mobility is vital to residents' mental and physical well-being.
Percentage of Residents
Higher is Better
Hospitalizations
This metric tracks the number of times residents are hospitalized per 1,000 days of patient care.
Hospitalizations per 1,000 resident days
Lower is Better
Short-term Care: Rehospitalizations
This datapoint is a measure of the number of times residents are rehospitalized per 1,000 days of short-term resident care. Keeping residents out of the hospital during rehabilitation is key to restoring the physical well-being of residents.
Percentage of Residents Rehospitalized
Lower is Better
Short-term Care: ER Visits
Measures the number of times residents are sent to the emergency room per thousand days of short-term care. Avoiding emergency medical situations is one way to gauge short-term care.
Percentage of Patients
Lower is Better
Short-term Care: Facilitates Functional Improvement
This tells you the percentage of short-term residents that saw functional improvements, such as enhanced ability to perform activities of daily living.
Percentage of Resident
Higher is Better