Autumn Lake Healthcare at Denton

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in that category with a score of B-. Inspection grades account for several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

Remarkably, we awarded this nursing home a C for its short-term care score, which isn't too bad of a score. Short-term care ratings are important for residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. This includes a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. We were surprised to find that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. The facility supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this is adversely impacting the quality of care. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Unfortunately, this facility only received a grade of D for its nursing grade, which was actually one of its better category grades. Nursing grades are based largely on quantity of nursing care available. This particular facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This figure is quite a bit below the national average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing ratings. This facility performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these metrics to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Switching gears to our final category, this facility really did not perform well in this area either. Due to a rock bottom grade of F in long-term care, this is just about as terrible as it gets. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means the facility did not perform well in our measures relating to resident care. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 68.9781 percent of its residents. This is many points lower than the national average. To our surprise, this place was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.