Valley West Health Care Center

In addition to being a quality nursing home overall, this facility excelled in the area of short-term care, where it earned an A. Our short-term care scores are meaningful for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a broad range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place 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 state 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 employing a policy of turning residents even once per day.

This facility earned a solid inspection report this year as well, with few dings from the applicable government inspectors. As a result, it received one of our better grades in that category with a score of B-. We believe that one of the most critical factors in assessing an inspection report is deficiencies. In this regard, we especially focus on the severity of the deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

The final area we rated was long-term care. This facility was given a B- in this category. In determining our long-term care grades, we look at the assistance with daily living received by the facility's patients. One of the factors we considered after nurse's aid hours was vaccines. Thankfully, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 97.95918 percent of its patients. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.