Avalon Care Center - Pullman

We awarded this facility one of our better scores in nursing, with an A-. This is a notably better grade than the facility's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. The nursing score features several subcategories. The most important variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Another one of this facility's better category grades was in the area of short-term care. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B. Our short-term care grade is often used to measure a facility's rehabilitation services. To have quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide better levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients that were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 4.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Turning to our inspection category, we gave this nursing home a grade of just D, which wasn't one of this nursing home's better scores. Our inspection grade is based on the facility's government inspection reports. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Generally, you should be more cautious when considering a facility with severe deficiencies on a recent inspection report. This particular nursing home was hit with 7 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only favorable thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they caused a threat to resident safety or health. Lastly, we need to draw your attention to the fact that this place was assessed significant government fines recently totaling more than $100,000. This usually suggests that a poor performance spanned more than one year.

The final area we graded is long-term care, proved to be this facility's least impressive category. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in that area. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. After assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is higher than most nursing homes. Surprisingly, this nursing home also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.