Niles Canyon Post Acute

In addition to performing well in its overall score, this nursing home received an excellent long-term care score. In fact, we gave it an impressive grade of A in that category. Facilities that excel in this category typically provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous ailment for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

On the list of its many dominant grades, this facility received a strong short-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a score of A in that category. Our short-term care grade is typically employed to score a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to have highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to offer better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. Unfortunately, we were not able to find registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The final item we looked at in this category is the number of residents that returned 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 nursing home on a permanent basis.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. Inspection grades are based on many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area have 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 particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The last category we rated is nursing, in which this facility was given a grade of B-. This actually turned out to be this nursing home's least impressive area. This is still a middle of the pack score. There are many data points included in this category. Most of these factors are tied to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, our nursing scores also consider some quality-focused statistics. We like to look at the percentage of patients who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. These metrics are decent indicators of the quality of nursing care, since better care can reduce these problems.