Avalon Garden Skilled Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this nursing home fared even better in our inspections category which is based on the nursing home's recent government inspections. We awarded it a grade of A for this category, which is one of our best scores. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively insignificant. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem 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 nursing home performed well in our long-term care category. As a result, we gave it a grade of A for that category, which happens to be one of our highest grades. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 90.521324 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is a bit below what we anticipated but still a respectable figure. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The third area we looked at was short-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a decent grade of B-. Our short-term care grades are important for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a wide spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The last measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below the national average.

The next category we rated was nursing. This facility was given a strong nursing rating in our assessment, with a grade of B-. Even though this isn't quite as elite as several of its other category grades, this is nevertheless a respectable score for this category. The nursing grade includes several factors. The most important variable is the amount of time nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure which is well below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. While this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality measures. With less than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this area. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning a resident at least once a day.