Avalon Place

Avalon Place is located in Monroe, Louisiana. We awarded it an overall grade of B-, which is a middle of the pack score. Based on our analysis, this place ought to meet the needs of many people. The best part of this facility's report card was its remarkable inspection grade. We discuss inspections in the next paragraph.

In addition to being a respectable facility overall, this facility really excelled in the category of inspections, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means 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 nursing home also excelled in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a score of A. Few facilities performed more favorably in this area. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are well cared for. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, we looked at the facility's number of hospitalizations. Here we found that this place had 2.99 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Although this admittedly wasn't as favorable as most of its other scores in this area, this number can be skewed for some nursing homes due to some of the medical complexity of patients.

We awarded this nursing home a grade of just D for our short-term care score. This is not a very good score. With our short-term care grade, we attempt to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze the facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. In this facility's case, we found that it provides fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the typical facility. The last metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 45.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these relatively poor statistics doomed this nursing home's short-term care score.

This facility's worst category is nursing, which is the final category we analyzed. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this area. In spite of some acceptable scores in other categories, this score is nevertheless of a concern so we would like to to make sure you are aware. We scrutinized the licensure of nurses employed by the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time the nurses spent with residents, in calculating our grade in this category. This nursing home averages 3.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is below the national average. On top of receiving below average scores for nursing hours, this place was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in computing our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of residents suffering pressure ulcers and found that this place was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this metric. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that so many pressure ulcers are preventable with better nursing care. This statistic really pulled down this facility's nursing grade significantly.