Valencia Gardens Health Care Center

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this place an A for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings are based on many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This facility was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This nursing home was given an impressive short-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Our short-term care grade is generally used to grade a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To provide highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this category is the number of patients that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also received a favorable long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B in this area. When facilities receive this kind of grade in this category it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. After looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 96.77419 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is more than the average nursing home. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next area we scored ended up being this nursing home's poorest area. Nevertheless, even in its worst category we still awarded it a respectable grade of B- for our nursing category. Our nursing grade assesses the facility's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This particular facility provided just 0.5 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This figure is far below average. Lastly, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this area. This is generally an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning a resident even once per day.