Armour Oaks Senior Living Community

While we did not have many positive things to say about this place's overall grade, it earned a respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent score in that category with a score of B-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. This nursing home was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. Nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this nursing home an B-. When computing our nursing scores, we weigh both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the training levels of the nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, nursing scores also factor in quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually a reliable indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.

This facility's third highest category is short-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B-. In forming our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to formulate a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. 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 facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The last category we rated is long-term care. We awarded this facility a C in this category. Our long-term care scores are more critical for folks in need of more conventional services associated with personal care. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. Candidly, we were a bit worried that this facility vaccinated 69.14893 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be several points lower than what we were hoping for. Fortunately, 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.