Haven of Tucson

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This facility was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to create an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility really excelled in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a score of A-. Not many nursing homes performed better in this category. Short-term care grades are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a broad scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The next category we analyzed is long-term care. It received one of our more favorable grades in that area, with a grade of A-. For residents seeking a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's weakest area was nursing, which is the final area we assessed. For this category, we gave this facility a D. We would like to to draw your attention to this potential weakness, however, you should not dwell on one bad category either. Our nursing grade consists of a handful of data points, however, the most important one is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility averaged just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.