Sunset Home

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a grade of B- for our nursing rating. Nursing grades are primarily based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures. While this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this area. This is often a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning residents more often.

Unfortunately, this facility's next best category was inspections. Nevertheless, with a grade of just D in this category, it still fared relatively poorly. Our inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. Generally, you should be most cautious when considering a facility that has severe deficiencies on its inspection reports. This particular nursing home had 4 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they posed a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility also received 6 substantiated complaints in recent years. This is yet another bad sign.

Another unfortunate development was the F this nursing home was given in the area of short-term care. In computing our short-term care ratings, we analyze a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is considered to be a fair assessment of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. With its score in this area, we were not stunned to discover that this facility is well below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the data we assessed. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients that returned home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.

The next area we looked at is long-term care, where this facility received an abysmal grade in this area also. Unfortunately, we gave it an F for this area, which is obviously a major disappointment. Nursing homes that do not score well in this category often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in a few of the areas of routine medical care we assessed. One of the factors we considered after nurse's aid hours was vaccines. Frankly, we were a bit concerned this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to a relatively low 61.02941 percent of its residents. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This is its best feature in this category.