Valle Vista Convalescent Hospital

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility received even higher grades in our short-term care category. In fact, it earned one of our best grades in that area with an A. Short-term care ratings are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our inspection grades are based on several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category 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 hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies an immediate risk to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. There are several factors included in this grade. Many of the factors are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning a patient at least once a day.

Switching gears to our next category, this facility received a respectable long-term care grade. Even though this isn't nearly as strong as many of its other grades, this is really not the end of the world. With our long-term care rating, we focus more on the sheer volume of services provided by a facility, as well as some quality data points. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.