Long Beach Care Center

Even though we did not rate this facility favorably overall, we want to note its relatively favorable long-term care rating this year. We gave it a B in this area, which was far better than its overall score. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in this category it is a good sign for patient care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is better than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.04 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Shockingly, this nursing home actually received a good score in inspections as well. In fact, we gave it a grade of B for that category, which is one of our better scores. Not many nursing homes that were this poor overall earned multiple category grades of this caliber. Inspection scores weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. You should avoid nursing homes with a list of severe deficiencies flagged. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We were surprised to find that this facility also excelled in the category of nursing. We gave it an D for that category, which is one of our highest grades. Nursing scores are mostly based on the facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is an alarmingly low total. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This place performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

Moving on to our next area, this facility really did not fare well in this area either. With a rock bottom grade of F in short-term care, this is really as bad as it gets. In forming our short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to formulate a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Considering its grade in this category, we were not surprised to discover that this facility is well below average in terms of its number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents based on the figures we assessed. Honestly, this was what we expected here. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 2.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.