Holiday Heights Nursing Home

We want to point out that this nursing home outperformed its overall score in the category of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest grades in that area with a grade of A+. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This nursing home also was awarded a favorable grade in our long-term care category. We gave this nursing home a better than average grade of B in that category. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are kept in good health. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also awarded this facility a middle of the pack score in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of C. Short-term care grades are generally used to gauge a facility's rehabilitation services In order to provide good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. We were not able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Switching gears to the fourth area, this nursing home was given an acceptable nursing score of C. The nursing rating is based on a number of factors. The most important one is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, we also factored some quality measures into our nursing scores. This facility was relatively weak in two of the major metrics we look at, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally good measures of the quality of nursing care offered.