Vista Pacifica Convalescent Hospital

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this nursing home also received first-rate health inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best grades in this category, with an A. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. A few relatively minor dings aren't something to panic about.

This nursing home truly excelled in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A-. Few nursing homes performed more favorably in this area. Facilities that excel in this category typically provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing grade consists of several factors, however, the most important one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.5 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 facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last category we analyzed was this nursing home's worst category. Nevertheless, even in its worst category we still gave it an acceptable grade of C for short-term care. In crafting these short-term care scores, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this nursing home provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents that were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well below average.