Sierra Health Care Center

While this nursing home received a decent overall score, its inspections rating is notably better than its overall score. Due to a strong inspection report this year, it earned a strong score in that area with a B+. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an B. Our nursing grade looks at the facility's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

We also gave this facility a middle of the pack grade in the area of long-term care, with a grade of B-. For residents looking for a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. This facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Moving on to our final category, we awarded this facility a grade of D in short-term care. This was the nursing home's weakest category grade. Sadly, this grade hurt the nursing home's overall grade to some degree. In forming these short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Unfortunately, we learned that this place offers less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most facilities. The last metric we considered in this category is the number of residents who eventually returned home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 3.7 percent of its residents returning home.