Pacifica Nursing and Rehab Center

On top of being an elite nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in our inspections category, where it earned an A+. Very few places performed this well in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively minor. 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also awarded this nursing home a score of A+ for its short-term care grade. Our short-term care grades are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 7.4 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Turning the page to our third category, this facility was awarded first-rate long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in this category. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care grades. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Switching gears to the last category, this nursing home also performed well in the nursing category. We gave it an A- for this category. This topped off a straight A report card. Our nursing rating weighs a host of data points. The most important variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these areas as predictive measures of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.