La Casa via Transitional Care Center

This nursing home received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially wanted to point out its excellent nursing rating. We awarded them an A- in this category. Our nursing rating focuses on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home California in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving patients more frequently.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. 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 is also above average in the category of short-term care, where it received a score of B+. It performed more favorably than most facilities in this category. In our short-term care score, we strive to create a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at the nursing home's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, 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 patients returned home.

The final area we graded is long-term care, proved to be this facility's worst category. We gave this nursing home a D in this area. This is one of just a couple of weak links on a strong report card. Long-term care scores in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We were not able to locate information on vaccination rates. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.