Golden Living Center - Fresno

While this place's overall grade was abysmal, it didn't perform quite as poorly in the area of long-term care. We gave it a B- for that category, which isn't bad. This wasn't enough to salvage its otherwise poor profile. In computing our long-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Thankfully, this facility administered the vaccine to 98.61933 percent of its patients, which is a very solid datapoint. This place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility excelled in nursing, where it received a grade of B-. Few places fared better in this area. Nursing ratings are largely based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of these quality measures. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared well in this area. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving patients more often.

This nursing home ended up receiving a a very poor score in our short-term care area. It was given an F in this category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we analyze a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This area is more often than not a useful assessment of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. With its abysmal rating in this area, we were not surprised to discover that this facility provides substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The last measure we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care score.

Moving on the final category of inspections, this facility had an abysmal showing. It received an F in our inspection rating. This happens to be the most heavily weighted category in our overall scoring system. For facilities with bad inspection grades, you should focus on any severe deficiencies found on their inspection reports. This particular nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only positive thing we found is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they caused a threat to resident health or safety. Finally, we would like to point out that this facility was assessed significant government fines amounting to over $100,000. This generally indicates that a facility's bad performance has been an issue for several years.