San Jacinto Healthcare

One of the reasons this ended up being a great nursing home is that it received an impressive inspection grade. Inspections ended up being its best category. In this category, we gave this nursing home an A. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing rating is primarily tied to a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home also was dominant in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A-. Very few facilities fared better in this category. In calculating our short-term care scores, we look at the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This category is generally a useful assessment of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The last category we looked at proved to be this nursing home's worst area. However, even its lowest point would actually be a strength for most facilities. We awarded it a strong grade of B in our long-term care category. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.04 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.