Life Care Center of Scottsdale

To pair with its strong overall grade, we gave this facility an A for short-term care. In the category of short-term care, we try to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Turning to inspections, this nursing home excelled in that area, which is based on the facility's inspection reports. We awarded it an A for that category. Our inspection scores are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Nursing scores are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to our last category, this facility also excelled in the long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it an A in this area. This wrapped up truly elite profile. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.