Vi at Palo Alto

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ short-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. In the area of short-term care, we strive to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 7.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

In addition, this facility received superb marks in the area of long-term care. For this reason, it was given one of our best scores in that area with a score of A+. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't take any chances. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. There are several factors within this category. Most of these datapoints are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving a resident more frequently.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. This rounded out a straight A report card for this facility. Our inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category typically have very few severe deficiencies. This facility was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.