Mount Vista Rehabilitation and Health Center

In addition to being a quality nursing home overall, this nursing home really excelled in the area of nursing, where it received an A-. Few facilities performed better in this category. Our nursing rating weighs quite a few components, but the main one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning patients more often.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

This nursing home also was given an impressive long-term care grade. Indeed, we gave it an above average score of B+ in this category. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is significantly higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The final category we looked at was short-term care, in which this facility was awarded a C. While this wound up being its weakest category score, this is nevertheless not a major area of concern. Our short-term care ratings are presumably more critical for individuals in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this facility submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.