Sunnyvale Post-Acute Center

We would like to point out that this nursing home's inspection grade exceeded its overall grade. This facility earned a grade of B+ in this category, which is a quality score. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Another one of this facility's more impressive category scores was in the category of long-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B. It actually performed better than most facilities in this area. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a life threatening illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The third category we looked at was short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B-. Short-term care grades are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a broad scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The last metric we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 5.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home. This figure was below average.

Moving on to our last category, this facility was awarded a B- in nursing, which is generally an acceptable grade. The nursing rating weighs quite a few subcategories, but the primary one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it scored well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.