Sun Mar Nursing Center

To go along with a favorable overall score, we gave this facility an A+ for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category usually have very few severe deficiencies. 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, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its top-shelf profile, this nursing home also performed well in our long-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in the area. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. We assessed the qualifications of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of time those nurses were with patients, in computing our grade in this category. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we scored was short-term care. This facility was given a very good nursing grade in our assessment, with a B. While this wasn't as strong as several of its other grades, this is nevertheless one of the better scores in this area. Our short-term care scores are probably most critical for residents requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.