Tierra Pines Center

The primary reason this facility received a decent overall grade is its impeccable inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our higher scores in that area, with a grade of A. This is a notably better grade than the facility's overall grade, which was decent but certainly not elite. Inspection scores are based on datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This facility was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility performed well in the area of nursing. In fact, we awarded it an C for that category, which is one of our best scores. Nursing grades are mostly tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this nursing home got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this metric. This is typically a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving a patient more often.

This nursing home's third most favorable area turned out to be its long-term care score, where it was awarded a grade of C. For patients looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 92.2353 percent of its residents, which is slightly less than we were hoping for. On a more positive note, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Moving on to our fourth area, this nursing home did not fare very well. With an abysmal grade of F in short-term care, this is this facility's worst category. Short-term care grades are commonly used to score a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally must offer higher levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 3.4 percent of its patients returning home.