Mountains Community Hospital Distinct Part Skilled Nursing

With an address in Lake Arrowhead, California, Mountains Community Hospital Distinct Part Skilled Nursing is the lone nursing home located in the area. After receiving an A+ overall grade, this nursing home has the prestigious distinction of being one of the 50 best facilities in California. In our view, this facility ought to be a no brainer for most people. Headlining this place's exemplary report card is its nursing rating, which we will address in the next paragraph.

We also want to emphasize that this nursing home excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an A+ in this category. In determining a facility's nursing rating, we assess the number of hours nurses are caring for residents as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This facility provides an incredible 9.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. Out of that total, many of the hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the more highly trained levels of nurses. On top of providing high levels of care, this nursing home was also above average in each of the major quality-based metrics we assessed in this category. By way of illustration, it performed well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. These datapoints are generally reliable measures of the quality of nursing care a nursing home offers.

This facility also received an A+ for its long-term care score. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are kept in good health. One of the factors we considered after this facility's quality nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 98.7013 percent of its residents. Vaccines are a great way to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for seniors. This combination proved to be successful as this place also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also earned a nearly flawless inspection report. It earned one of our top grades in that area with a score of A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be quite minor. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning to our fourth category, this nursing home was given a strong short-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that area, giving this facility straight A's. In crafting these short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides more care with registered nurses to its residents than the average nursing home. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.