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.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for inspections. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS did not 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.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A- in our nursing category. We assessed the licensure of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses were with residents, in determining our rating in this area. This facility provided 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 nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In the final area, we gave this nursing home an A for its short-term care grade. This topped off a very strong report card. In calculating our short-term care grades, we look at the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This area is frequently a reliable assessment of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.