Highland View Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center

One of the many reasons this place ended up being a great nursing home is that it earned an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this critical category. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its strong profile, this nursing home also was given a dominant long-term care score, with a score of A. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. In calculating our nursing ratings, we look at both staffing levels and the skill levels of those nurses. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last category we scored is short-term care, in which this nursing home was awarded a B. This actually turned out to be this nursing home's worst area. A facility could be doing a lot worse when their poorest score still rates higher than most other facilities. In the area of short-term care, we seek to qualify indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.