Avalon Place Kirbyville

While this facility received a decent overall score, its inspections rating is notably better than its overall grade. Due to a strong inspection report this year, it received a strong score in that category with a grade of B+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively minor. This place received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home also was given a positive long-term care score. As a matter of fact, we gave it a B+ in this category, which happens to be one of our better. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 98.59813 percent of its patients, which is better than most nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.6 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of C. We scrutinized the qualifications of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the quantity of time those nurses were with patients, in computing our rating in this area. This nursing home provides 3.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused statistics. Specifically, we look at the percent of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these areas as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The next category we looked at was short-term care, which is this facility's weakest category. It received a lowly F for this area, which is obviously a major concern. In the category of short-term care, we try to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Not surprisingly, we discovered that this nursing home offers substantially less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than a typical nursing home. The final metric we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 36.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care score.