Rocky Mountain Care in Honolulu, Hawaii

Even though we did not have many favorable things to say about this facility's overall grade, it did receive a respectable nursing rating of B-. Our nursing grade looks at the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of skill of the nurses and the number of hours spent with residents. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a low total compared to most facilities. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically an indicator that a facility has quality controls in place.

This nursing home's next best category was short-term care. We gave it a B- in this area. This is basically a middle of the road score in this category. With our short-term care grade, we strive to craft a sound measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze a facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the typical facility. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The third category we looked at is long-term care, where this nursing home was given a B- in this area. In determining our long-term care ratings, we look at the facility's personal care services. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 93.609024 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be slightly lower than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Fortunately, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In our last category of inspections, this nursing home received a grade that's as bad as it gets. When a place has this bad of an inspection rating, you should look for severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to patient safety. This particular facility was assessed 3 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only positive thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they created a threat to patient health or safety. Lastly, this nursing home was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. This is generally a really bad sign. We would never recommend this facility.