Vista Post-Acute

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In that area, we awarded this facility an A-. The nursing rating assesses a handful of subcategories, however, the primary one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In addition, this nursing home also performed well in inspections, which is based on its recent inspection reports. In fact, we awarded it an A- for that category, which is one of our best grades. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Turning to another strength for this nursing home, we awarded them one of our stronger grades in our long-term care category as well, with a B+. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next category we looked at is short-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of C. Although this turned out to be its worst category grade, this is still not a terrible score. Our short-term care grade is typically used to gauge a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To have highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to offer higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this facility submitted registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The final measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below the national average.