Long Beach Post Acute

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in long-term care, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. After assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility an A. Nursing ratings are based in large part on quantity of nursing care available. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place 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 the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a resident at least once a day.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings are based on items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The final category we assessed was short-term care. This nursing home received a strong nursing grade this year, with a B. While this wasn't as elite as several of its other category grades, this remains one of the more favorable scores in this area. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. 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 number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 4.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.