Sierra Rehabilitation and Care Community

While we did not rate this facility well overall, we want to point out its decent government inspection reports in recent years. We awarded it a somewhat respectable score of B- in this category. Our inspection ratings are based on items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these inspections. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an B-. There are a number of criteria within this area. Many of the subcategories reflect staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually excelled in some of the quality measures we assessed. It performed well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.

This facility received its third best category score in the area of long-term care. We awarded this nursing home a C in this area, which is a reasonably acceptable grade. Our long-term care ratings are more meaningful for individuals requiring more traditional assistance associated with personal care. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 93.50283 percent of its patients. This is a few points lower than we expected but still a decent figure. Nevertheless, this nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to the next area, we gave this facility a D for our short-term care category. This is the nursing home's least impressive category rating. Our short-term care grades are thought to be most important for those needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. With its score in this category, we weren't surprised to discover that this nursing home was well below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. The last item we looked at in this category is the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was quite a bit below average.