Mountain View Regional Medical Center

On top of earning a strong overall grade, this facility also received excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best grades in that area, with an A. Arguably the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This facility was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to be an immediate risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. Nursing grades are primarily tied to the nursing home's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place 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 generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we analyzed is short-term care. Adding to its high-end resume, this facility also excelled in this category. In fact, we awarded it a of A- for the area. Short-term care grades are based in part on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a wide range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. We were not able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The last item we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

Turning to the fourth category, this facility also performed well in the long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a B+ in this area. This completed a first-rate report card. For long-term care residents, 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 assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 90 percent of its patients. This is a bit less than we anticipated but still a decent percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, at least this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.