Veterans Home of California - Fresno

Veterans Home of California - Fresno is an average-sized government-owned facility located in Fresno, California. Featuring an overall grade of A, this is without a doubt a top-shelf nursing home. In fact, we ranked this facility as the third best facility in Fresno. Keep reading to see this nursing home's category grades, which are also strong. It's hard to poke holes in this nursing home's profile.

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. We looked at the levels of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses spent with residents, in calculating our rating in this category. This place provided 5.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis, which is among the more impressive figures in the country. A significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the more skilled levels of nurses. We were really impressed by both of these figures. On top of offering high levels of care, this place also performed well in several of the quality-based metrics we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its residents suffering falls leading to serious injury, this facility performed as well as any facility California. Preventing serious falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses and better safety protocols are employed.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to resident health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

The third category we looked at was short-term care. Contributing to its dominant resume, this facility also performed well in that area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A for the category. With our short-term care category, we try to forge a meaningful measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at a facility's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. When we assessed this facility's nursing hours, we found it offered more care from registered nurses than most nursing homes. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that were able to return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home rather than remaining at the facility permanently.

Moving on to our last area, this nursing home was given a very strong long-term care score. While this isn't nearly as impressive as some of its other category grades, this is nevertheless one of the more impressive scores a facility can receive. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are well cared for. After considering the impressive nursing hours provided by this facility, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.7 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.