Pacific Coast Manor

In addition to receiving a strong overall score, this facility also received an elite short-term care grade. We gave them one of our higher scores in that area, with an A. In computing our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This category is frequently a fair assessment of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Adding to its impressive profile, this facility also performed at a high level in the area of inspections. In fact, it earned a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best grades in that area with a score of A-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some are quite insignificant. 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.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. When calculating our nursing scores, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the training levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 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 generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving residents even once per day.

This facility's worst category is long-term care, which is the last area we analyzed. In this area, we gave this nursing home a grade of just D. We would like to to draw your attention to this possible weak link, but you should not over-emphasize one area either. For residents in need of a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.