Valle Verde Health Facility

On top of performing well overall, this nursing home received high marks in the area of short-term care as well. As a result, it received our highest grade in that category with an A+. Our short-term care scores are based in part on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a vast spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we considered in this category is the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 7.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also earned an A+ inspection grade, making it one of the rare facilities to receive multiple A+'s in our categories. This score is based on the facility's government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the best complements we can pay to a facility. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the 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 relatively minor deficiencies aren't necessarily something to panic about.

This nursing home also received an A+ nursing grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. Our nursing score features a host of datapoints. The most heavily weighted variable is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving patients more often.

The next area we looked at was long-term care, where this facility was awarded a B. This actually is this nursing home's worst category. A nursing home is doing something right when it's worst score still beats out most other facilities. Nursing homes that do well in this category typically provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.