Desert Willow Health & Rehabilitation Center

While we did not rate this nursing home well overall, we wanted to note its decent inspections in recent years. We awarded it a relatively respectable score of B- in that area. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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, CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In that area, we awarded this nursing home an B-. When determining a nursing home's nursing score, we assess the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of training of the nurses. This facility provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a lower figure than we were hoping for. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility actually excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. It performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

This facility was awarded its third best category grade in the area of short-term care. We gave this facility a grade of B- in this category, which is a decent grade. In our short-term care score, we endeavor to craft a fair barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at the facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its level of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the measures we assessed. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 3.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The final category we looked at was long-term care, which was a weak link for this facility. We gave this nursing home a grade of just D in the area of long-term care. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 96.47059 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.