La Canada Care Center

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A for the area of inspections. Our inspection ratings are tied to datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category 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. 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.

This nursing home was awarded an impressive long-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our higher scores in that category with a grade of B+. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 97.07113 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility is also strong in the category of short-term care, where it received a score of B+. It performed better than most nursing homes in this area. Our short-term care grades are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other types of therapy. We were not able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The next area we rated is this facility's weakest area. However, even in its worst category we still awarded it a respectable grade of C in nursing. When calculating a facility's nursing grade, we consider the quantity of hours nurses commit to patients as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, while this facility got dinged a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of our quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed well in this area.