Avalon Nursing Home

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ in the area of long-term care. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. We looked at the skill-level of nurses working for the nursing home, in addition to the number of hours those nurses worked with patients, in calculating our rating in this category. 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an impressive grade of B+. Few facilities performed better in this area. Inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this category tend to have very few severe deficiencies. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The last category we scored was short-term care, where this facility received a B+. This completed a first-rate report card. Not many nursing homes earned a B+ or better in every single category. In our short-term care rating, we seek to create a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at the nursing home's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.