Vista Woods Care Center

On top of being an elite facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A+. Very few places fared as well in this category. Inspection grades are tied to many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. This turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility an A-. Our nursing grade focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home also was awarded a impressive long-term care grade. This actually is this nursing home's third best category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening health condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next category we looked at was short-term care, where this nursing home received a B-. This proved to be this facility's worst area. This is still not the end of the world. Our short-term care grades are crucial for prospective residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This means a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 3.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below average.