Santa Fe Lodge

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this facility also excelled in our long-term care category, where it received an A. Few facilities performed better in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this facility 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 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Nursing scores are mostly based on a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 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 minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Adding yet another impressive category grade, we gave this facility a grade of B+ for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite insignificant. This nursing home was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The final category we scored was short-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home an impressive grade of B. In calculating our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility submitted registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The final item we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.