Vista Hills Health Care Center

Vista Hills Health Care Center is in the densely populated metropolitan area of El Paso, Texas with a population of 746,640 people. This nursing home was awarded a somewhat concerning overall grade of D, which is a subpar rating. Fortunately, this nursing home is one of 20 nursing homes in this city so if you aren't impressed, you should have better options. If you aren't deterred by this place's profile, you can continue reading to find out about its category scores. We discuss inspections in the next section.

Although we didn't rate this facility favorably overall, we did give it an excellent score in the area of inspections, where it earned an A-. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Another one of this nursing home's better category scores came in the category of long-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a B. When facilities receive this type of score in this category it is typically a good sign for patient care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.93 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Turning to the area of nursing care, this facility received a grade of just D in this category. The nursing score features numerous datapoints. The most important variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This particular nursing home averaged just 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This number is well below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at some quality measures in calculating our nursing grades. This place was above average in two of the metrics we focus on, with good scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These statistics are typically reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care available.

The next category we looked at is short-term care, where this nursing home was given a poor score in this category also. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F in this area, which is obviously very concerning. In computing our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is typically a fair measure of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the number of patients who returned home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 28.2 percent of its patients returning home.