West Anaheim Medical Center Adult Subacute Services

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to be an imminent threat to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this nursing home was given dominant marks in the category of long-term care. For this reason, it received one of our best grades in that area with a score of A+. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our nursing score is primarily associated with a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 1.1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place California in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving residents even once per day.

Turning to the final category, this nursing home was given a very strong short-term care rating. Although this wasn't as good as many of its other grades, this remains one of our stronger scores a facility can receive. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.