Walnut Creek Skilled Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

To pair with its strong overall score, this facility received a B+ for its nursing rating. Our nursing grade looks at the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. 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 facility 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 typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+ for our inspections rating. Inspection grades are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This place was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to create an immediate risk to resident safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

The third area we looked at is short-term care. This facility was awarded a very positive short-term care score, with a B in the area. Short-term care ratings are important for individuals looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this category is the number of residents that returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The last category we looked at is long-term care. We awarded it a B- in this area. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. For residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. It doesn't appear that this nursing home submitted vaccination data. Lastly, this place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.