Havasu Regional Medical Center

To go along with its strong overall score, we gave this nursing home an elite grade of A+ for its short-term care score. In crafting our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Nursing grades are mostly tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving residents more often.

We also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received a top-shelf grade of A in our long-term care area. For residents in need of a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this nursing home submitted vaccination data. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to our inspection category, this facility excelled in that area, which is based on the nursing home's recent government inspections. We awarded it an A for that category. This wrapped up its straight A report card. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this category typically have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.