Huntington Valley Healthcare Center

Huntington Valley Healthcare Center is located in Huntington Beach, California. This nursing home proved to be a very solid facility, with an overall grade of B. This grade is right in line with the city grade in Huntington Beach. We were also pleased to find that this nursing home did not have any poor grades in any of the four major categories. Additional information about these categories can be found below.

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this nursing home also earned top notch government inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our higher scores in this area, with an A-. Our inspection grades are tied to many datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

Another one of this facility's above average category scores came in the category of short-term care. We gave them one of our stronger scores in that area, with a score of B+. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. This facility offered more registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most nursing homes. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that this nursing home was better than average with 54.6 percent of its patients returning home.

The next category we assessed was long-term care, where this facility was awarded a B- in this area. In our long-term care category, we focus more on the sheer quantity of services provided by a facility, as well as a few qualitative datapoints. In addition to providing quality levels of nursing care, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 99.75308 percent of its patients. This percentage is better than the average nursing home. Lastly, we looked at the facility's number of hospitalizations. Here we found that this facility had 3.68 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Although this figure is quite a bit higher than the national average, this number may be skewed for some facilities based on the medical complexity of patients.

The final category we rated was nursing. We awarded this facility a grade of B- in that category. Our nursing rating weighs a host of factors. The most heavily weighted variable is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This facility provided 4.5 hours of nursing care per patient daily, which is among the better totals in California. A significant portion of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the more highly skilled levels of nurses. We were impressed by both of these figures. Finally, we also factored some quality measures into our nursing grades. Specifically, we looked at the percent of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these areas as good indicators of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.