Mountain Vista Health Center

In addition to performing well in its overall score, this facility earned even higher marks in the area of nursing. We gave it one of our highest grades in this category with an A-. Our nursing grade is based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also performed well in the area of inspections. In fact, it earned a nearly flawless inspection report this year. It received one of our best scores in that category with an A-. Few nursing homes with an overall score in this range performed this well in multiple categories. Inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This facility also received a strong short-term care score. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B in this area. In the area of short-term care, we try to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the number of residents that returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The last area we scored was long-term care, which turned out to be this nursing home's worst area. We awarded this nursing home a D in this category. Naturally, this category hurt the nursing home's overall profile to a certain degree. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category may not provide the kind of consistent 24/7 care that some other facilities offer. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 93.73297 percent of its residents for pneumonia. To our surprise, this facility actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best feature in this category.