South Davis Specialty Care

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This means that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its elite performance in other areas, we gave this nursing home a grade of A for our long-term care rating. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This is a great way to minimize unnecessary deaths for the senior population. 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 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also was awarded a top-shelf short-term care grade. In fact, this ended up being its third strongest category score. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of A-. Our short-term care grades are based on the nursing home's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a broad range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

In our last category, this facility also was awarded a very strong nursing grade, with a grade of B+. This wrapped up a first-rate report card. Our nursing rating assesses many factors, but the paramount consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.