Merced Behavioral Center

This nursing home's best category grade came in long-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B+. It actually outperformed most nursing homes in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the datapoints we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. This is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary deaths for the aged 65 and up population. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Inspections is another category where this facility excelled. In fact, we gave this nursing home an B+ for our inspections category. This score is far more impressive than its overall grade. Inspection ratings are based on several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. Our nursing score is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of training of those nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place.

Switching gears to the last area, this facility received a grade of C for short-term care, which we consider to be an acceptable rating. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This area is typically a meaningful measure of a facility's rehabilitation. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last item we considered in this category is the number of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below average.