The Heights of Summerlin

This nursing home's overall score was bolstered by the fact that it has earned favorable government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our better scores in this category, with a B+. This is a notably better grade than the facility's overall score. Inspection grades are based on pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this category tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. This turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this nursing home an B-. Our nursing rating focuses on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of skill of those nurses and the number of hours spent with residents. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared with most facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. In fact, it performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care provided.

We also awarded this nursing home a middle of the pack score in the category of short-term care, with a B-. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Unfortunately, we found that this facility provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The final item we considered in this area is the percentage of residents that were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

This facility's weakest area was long-term care, which is the final category we analyzed. For this category, we awarded this nursing home a D. For residents seeking a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. One of the statistics we considered on top of nurse's aid hours is vaccines. Fortunately, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 98.46154 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.