Yakima Valley School

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. In determining our nursing ratings, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This particular nursing home provided 1.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In addition, this facility received quality marks in the area of long-term care. For this reason, it received one of our highest grades in that area with a grade of A+. When facilities receive this type of score in long-term care it is typically a good sign for patient care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 98.91304 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received a superb grade of A in our short-term care area. Our short-term care grade is often employed to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation To offer highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents that were able to return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Finally, this nursing home also earned a virtually flawless government inspection report. As a result, it earned one of our highest grades in that category with an A. With this impressive grade, this place is one of the few nursing homes in Washington to receive straight A's. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. While this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.