Villa Rancho Bernardo Care Center

In addition to receiving a strong overall score, this facility performed well in our nursing category. We awarded it an A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our nursing score includes a handful of subcategories, however, the primary one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving a patient more often.

Another one of this nursing home's quality category grades came in the area of long-term care. We gave them one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a grade of B+. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, we awarded them one of our more positive grades in our short-term care category as well, with a B+. Short-term care grades are often used to gauge a facility's performance with rehabilitation To have highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 4.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Turning to the final category we assessed, this facility earned a decent grade in inspections as well. In fact, we gave it a B- for that category. This facility didn't have any major weak links. Inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. This nursing home was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.