Mesa Vista of Boulder

While this place's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually didn't perform terribly in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B- for that category, which is one of our better scores. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. 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. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

This facility really excelled in the category of nursing, where it earned an B-. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. We looked at the levels of nurses at the facility, as well as the number of hours the nurses were with patients, in determining our rating in this category. This nursing home provides 3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, our nursing scores also factor in quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Although this nursing home didn't have as many nursing hours per resident as many of the other nursing homes we assessed, it was still better than average in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically an indicator of how carefully a facility's nursing staff is tending to its patients. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

As it turns out, this nursing home only earned a D for its short-term care rating, which is well below average in this category. Our short-term care ratings are vital for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a broad scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Considering its weak grade in this category, we weren't surprised to learn that this nursing home provides substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 40.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

Moving on to the last category, this facility did not perform very well in this area either. With a rock bottom grade of F in long-term care, this is just about as terrible as it gets. Nursing homes that don't fare well in long-term care often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in some of the areas of routine healthcare services we looked at. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. Candidly, we were a bit alarmed this facility vaccinated 65.884476 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be quite a bit below the national average. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.12 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.