Sierra Winds

On top of receiving a great overall score, this facility excelled in inspections, which is based on its recent inspection reports. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To complement its dominant performance in other areas, we gave this facility a grade of A for our long-term care rating. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to elite nursing hour statistics, this nursing home's vaccination statistics is top notch as well. Indeed, it vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. This combination proved to be effective as this place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand 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. Our nursing category consists of many components, most of which are based on nursing hours. This facility provides an incredible 4.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Out of this total, many of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the more highly trained levels of nurses. On top of providing impressive levels of nursing care, this place also excelled in the quality-based metrics we assessed. For example, it performed as well as any nursing home in the nation in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We look at these areas as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.

In our last area, we awarded this facility an A for its short-term care grade. This wrapped up a very favorable report card. In computing our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. This facility is above the national average in terms of both its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community. This facility was better than average with 55.2 percent of its patients returning home.