San Francisco Towers

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Our short-term care scores are vital for patients in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of skilled nursing. This means a vast scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Turning to our inspection category, this nursing home excelled in that area, which is based on the facility's inspection reports. We awarded it an A for that category. Inspection scores are tied to pieces of information located in the a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning the page to our next area, this nursing home received an excellent long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a score of A in this category. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our next category, this facility also performed well in our nursing category. We gave it an A- in this area. This finalized a straight A profile. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also factored a few quality measures into our nursing grades. This nursing home was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.