Autumn Oaks Caring Center

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our inspection scores are based on several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

This nursing home's second most favorable category is its long-term care grade, where it was given a grade of B-. Our long-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's amount of nursing care. This includes a broad spectrum of personal care services, ranging from assistance with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 98.97959 percent of its residents. This place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The third highest area we awarded this nursing home in any area came in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of B-. In calculating these short-term care scores, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to devise a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. We weren't able to track down registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this place. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well below the national average.

Moving on to the final area, this facility received a C for nursing, which is an acceptable grade. We looked at the levels of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses spent with residents, in calculating our rating in this category. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It performed 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 many cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care offered.