Santa Monica Health Care Center

On top of earning a strong overall rating, this nursing home performed even better in the area of inspections which is based on the facility's recent government inspection reports. We gave it an A- for this area, which is one of our best grades. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

This facility was awarded a strong short-term care grade as well. We gave it one of our higher scores in that area with a grade of B+. Our short-term care ratings are based in part on the facility's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other types of therapy. We weren't able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return home from this facility. We found that 6.2 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. We scrutinized the levels of nurses at the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses worked with patients, in determining our score in this area. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to our fourth category, this nursing home was awarded an extremely favorable long-term care score. This nursing home did not prove to have any noticeable weaknesses. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place 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.