Valley Hi Nursing Home

Although this place's overall grade was not a highlight, it actually received a slightly more favorable grade in the area of inspections. We awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which is not bad. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report, which is still very impressive. Another red flag is that CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. In that category, we gave this nursing home an B-. Nursing grades are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a low total compared to most nursing homes. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place surprisingly excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care provided.

This facility was given its third most favorable category score in the area of short-term care. We gave this facility a B- in this category, which is an acceptable score. Our short-term care scores are based in part on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The more important thing is determining what bearing this had on the quality of care. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 5.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.

Switching gears to the next category, this facility was awarded an acceptable long-term care score of B-. In our long-term care grade, we focus more on the quantity of care provided by a nursing home, along with a handful of qualitative statistics. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 92.01681 percent of its patients. This is a few points below what we anticipated but still a decent figure. Nevertheless, this facility excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.