The Terraces of Phoenix

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility has received near flawless government inspections recently. We awarded them an A+ in this area. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This top notch facility also excelled in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of A+. Very few nursing homes fared better in this area. Our short-term care grade is generally used to score a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 7 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

This nursing home also received an A+ nursing grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. Nursing ratings are based in large part on nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In the last category we assessed, this facility was given a very favorable grade of A in our long-term care category. With this grade, the facility topped off a straight A report card. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 97.4359 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a life or death illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not leave this to chance. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.