Avalon West Health & Rehabilitation

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones 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 health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was elite in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a score of A. Only a select group of nursing homes fared better in this area. Short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a wide range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 5.3 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This nursing home also was elite in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A-. Very few facilities performed better in this area. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 99.65636 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In the final category, we awarded this facility a grade of A for our nursing rating. This wrapped up a very impressive report card. There are a host of data points included in this category. Most of the factors reflect staffing levels. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This facility fared well in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the percentage of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented with better nursing care.