Sierra Vista

To pair with its decent overall score, we gave this facility an A for our inspections rating. This grade is far more impressive than the facility's overall score. Inspection ratings are based on several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

This nursing home also received a strong grade in our nursing category. We awarded this nursing home an above average grade of B in this area. Nursing grades are primarily tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving patients more frequently.

The third area we analyzed was short-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a decent grade of C. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

This facility's worst category was long-term care, which is the last category we assessed. In this area, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. Nursing homes that don't score well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in some of the areas of routine medical care we looked at. One of the factors we considered after nurse's aid hours is vaccines. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to a relatively low 37.527115 percent of its residents. Surprisingly, this facility was actually decent at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.