Meridian at Laguna Hills

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ in the area of short-term care. Short-term care scores are important for prospective residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing. This includes a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily something to panic about.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. The nursing score includes several datapoints, many of which are tied to nursing hours. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we analyzed is long-term care, which turned out to be this facility's least impressive category. We awarded this facility a D in that category. However, we wouldn't assess this facility based solely on a single bad area, as it earned many very strong grades in other areas. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is often a bad sign for resident care and it may mean that the facility is not as well-staffed. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. It does not look like this facility provided information on its vaccination levels. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This is its best feature in this category.