The Courtyards at Pasadena

While this facility's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home was given its next most favorable category score in the category of short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a grade of B- in this area, which is a respectable score. In forming our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to create a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the typical facility. The final item we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 5.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. The nursing grade includes a handful of components, however, the most important consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is significantly below the national average. Finally, while this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of our quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it did well in this metric.

The final category we looked at is long-term care, which proved to be a weak spot for this nursing home. We awarded this facility a D in the area of long-term care. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means the facility didn't perform well in our measures relating to resident care. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 92.565056 percent of its patients, which is a few points less than we were hoping for. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. This was its best feature in this category.