Windsor Palms Care Center of Artesia

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of B- in that category. Nursing grades are based largely on quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this metric. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning a resident more frequently.

Remarkably, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B- for its long-term care score, which is not a bad grade. For prospective residents in need of a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. After considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility vaccinated 75.57034 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is quite a few points less than the national average. Nevertheless, this facility was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also wanted to draw your attention to this nursing home's inspection grades where it received an F. This generally means we found some red flags on the inspection reports. When a nursing home has this bad of an inspection grade, you should look for severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to resident safety. This facility had one category G through L deficiency, which rank among the more serious categories of deficiencies. This generally indicates that the deficiencies found by the government inspectors had potential to cause actual harm to residents. In addition to having severe deficiencies, this nursing home was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. This is generally a really bad sign. We would never recommend this facility.

The next area we analyzed is short-term care. This nursing home received an abysmal grade of F in that area. In our short-term care rating, we strive to forge a valuable gauge for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at the nursing home's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Considering its poor grade in this category, we weren't stunned to learn that this nursing home offered substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most nursing homes. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 3.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, about half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.