Villa Elena Healthcare Center

While we did not have many favorable things to say about this place's overall score, it earned a respectable government inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent score in this category with a score of B-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

This nursing home's short-term care score turns out to be one of its best features. The nursing home was given a B- in this category. Our short-term care grade is commonly employed to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have higher levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than a typical facility. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who returned home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. In determining our nursing scores, we analyze both nursing hours and the training levels of the nurses. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is significantly below the national average. Lastly, nursing grades also factor in quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally an indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

This nursing home's least impressive area was long-term care, which is the last area we looked at. In this category, we gave this nursing home a grade of just D. For residents looking for a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. One of the criteria we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccines. Thankfully, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.