Avalon Place Wharton

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a C for our inspections rating. In fact, the facility received very impressive inspection report this year. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but we were relieved to find that none were category G through L deficiencies. This tells you CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent danger to patient health or safety. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

Turning to the category of short-term care, this nursing home was given just a D in that area. As it turns out, this proved to be its second best grade. In determining our short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This category is considered to be a meaningful assessment of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This facility ended up receiving rock bottom score in our nursing category. It received an F in this category. Our nursing grade assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. This facility fared well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next category we rated was long-term care. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this area, which is a poor grade. Nursing homes that don't fare well in long-term care typically are not as well-staffed and are lagging in a few of the areas of routine personal care we assessed. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated a relatively low 80.59071 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.