Hillview Convalescent Hospital

On top of earning a strong overall score, this facility performed well in our nursing category. In fact, we gave it an A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. There are several datapoints within this area. Many of the subcategories relate to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility California in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning a patient even once per day.

This nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections. We gave it an B+ for that category. Our inspection scores are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

This facility also received an impressive short-term care score. Indeed, we awarded it an above average grade of B in this category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we look at the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This category is often a meaningful assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The final area we graded was long-term care, in which this facility received a B. This facility did not turn out to have any weaknesses. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.