West Anaheim Medical Center Adult Subacute Services

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the datapoints we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to minimize negative health outcomes for the elderly population. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also received an A+ inspection grade, making it one of the rare places to receive multiple A+'s in our categories. This is based on the place's recent government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the best complements we can pay to a nursing home. Inspection ratings are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not deem 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 an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. When determining our nursing ratings, we look at both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home provides 1.1 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final area we assessed was this nursing home's worst category. However, even its lowest point would likely be a strength for many nursing homes. We awarded it a favorable grade of B for our short-term care category. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to feature better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.