La Vida Llena

One of the main reasons this proved to be a strong nursing home is that it received a very impressive long-term care score. This ended up being its best grade. In that area, we gave this nursing home an impressive grade of A. Facilities that receive this type of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are well cared for. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

An additional quality feature for this nursing home is that it was given a favorable short-term care grade. Indeed, this proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of B+. In determining our short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This category is considered to be a reliable assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of B+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our inspection scores weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The next area we graded is nursing, in which this nursing home was given a grade of B-. Even though this wound up being its worst category score, this is still not a bad grade. Our nursing score focuses on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, while this facility didn't rank well in terms of nursing hours per resident, it fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. In terms of the number of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, this place performed better than average.