Palo Alto County Hospital

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

An additional reason we graded this facility so favorably is that it was awarded an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as elite as it gets in this area. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. The nursing grade includes many datapoints, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving residents more often.

In our last area, we gave this nursing home a grade of A+ for our short-term care rating. This topped off a very impressive report card. With our short-term care rating, we seek to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at a nursing home's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.