Guadalupe Valley Nursing Center

This nursing home's long-term care rating is notably more impressive than its overall score. Due to a strong performance in this category, it received one of our higher scores in that category with a grade of B+. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the elderly population. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility also excelled in inspections, where it received an B+. Inspection ratings are tied to items found on the a nursing home's government inspections. Facilities that score well in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to resident health or safety. A few minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

Unfortunately, this nursing home only received a grade of D for its short-term care score, which is not a score to write home about. In computing these short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to devise a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Not surprisingly, we discovered that this facility provides significantly less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than a typical facility. The last statistic we considered in this area is the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.9 percent of its patients returning home.

Moving on to our next category, we gave this facility a D for our nursing category. This is the facility's worst category grade. Our nursing score assesses quite a few factors, however, the main one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some quality measures in computing our nursing grades. This nursing home was above average in two of the data points we considered, with solid marks for avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care available.