Highland Manor of Mesquite

We also wanted to point out the fact that this nursing home earned near flawless health inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category typically have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To add to its impressive accomplishments in other areas, we gave this facility a grade of A for its short-term care score. With our short-term care grade, we seek to craft a fair gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess a nursing home's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this category is the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

We also wanted to note the fact that this nursing home was given a dominant grade of A in our long-term care area. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Moving on to the next category, this facility also performed admirably in the nursing category. In fact, we gave it an A- in that area. This wrapped up a straight A profile. Nursing scores are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these statistics as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.