Sun Health La Loma Care Center

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in the category of nursing, where it received a grade of A+. Few nursing homes fared better in this area. There are a host of factors within this category. Most of the criteria are tied to nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 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 many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this facility excelled in our long-term care rating. We gave them an exemplary score of A+ in this category. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are kept in good health. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Adding to an already impressive profile, this facility also received virtually flawless health inspections in recent years. As a result, we awarded it an A+ inspection grade. Inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category tend to have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning to our fourth category, this nursing home also received an A+ short-term care rating, rendering it one of the few of nursing homes to be given all A+'s. Our short-term care grades are meaningful for residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 6.2 percent of this facility's residents returned home.