Rolling Hills Care Center

To pair with its relatively modest overall grade, we gave this nursing home an A- for its inspection grade. This grade is far more impressive than its overall score. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facilities next most favorable category is short-term care. We gave it a B- in this area. This is essentially a middle of the pack score in this category. Short-term care grades are based on a facility's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the typical facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that just 5.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below average.

This facilities third best area was long-term care. We gave it a C in this category. This is basically a slightly below average grade in this area. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary goal is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. After looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final area we assessed was nursing, which turned out to be this nursing home's worst area. We awarded this facility a D in that area. When calculating our nursing ratings, we analyze both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is an alarmingly low total. To go along with its below average totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this facility had bad marks in some of the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing scores. For starters, we looked at the percent of patients experiencing falls which led to serious injury. This nursing home was at more than 1.5 times the national average in this statistic. This is quite alarming in light of the fact that so many falls could likely be prevented with better nursing care. This ended up sealing the nursing home's fate of earning a poor nursing score.