Pasadena Meadows Nursing Center

While we were not high on this place overall, we awarded it a B for our inspections category. This score is far more impressive than the place's overall score. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. It is typically in your best interest to avoid facilities that had a long list of severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an C. When calculating a facility's nursing score, we consider the quantity of hours nurses are seeing patients as well as the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is far below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility surprisingly excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. It scored well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

We also awarded this nursing home a middle of the road score in the category of short-term care, where it received a C. Our short-term care scores are probably more meaningful for patients needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. The key is determining what effect this had on the quality of care. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below the national average.

The final category we graded was long-term care. We awarded it a C in this category. This is a fair grade in this category. In the category of long-term care, we assess the quantity of care offered by a nursing home, as opposed to more sophisticated services. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to find information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.