Avalon Care Center-Bountiful

One of the many reasons this place turned out to be a great nursing home is it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this very important area. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This high end nursing home also excelled in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A+. Very few nursing homes fared better in this area. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our nursing rating is mostly associated with a facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we looked at is short-term care, where this facility was given an A. This wrapped up an elite profile. Few nursing homes earned an A- or higher in all four categories. In our short-term care assessment, we try to craft a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze the nursing home's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the number of patients that returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.