Veterans Home of California - Chula Vista

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility received an excellent nursing rating. We awarded it an A in that category. The nursing rating includes quite a few components, however, the primary consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 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 country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of turning residents more frequently.

This facility also received a very impressive short-term care score. In fact, this ended up being this facility's second strongest category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our short-term care ratings are critical for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

We awarded this nursing home an A- for our inspections rating. Our inspection scores account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category generally have few severe deficiencies. While this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

Turning to the fourth category, this facility was given an extremely favorable long-term care rating. In fact, we awarded it an A- in this category, rounding out a straight A profile. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. On top of considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.01802 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a deadly illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.