Avamere at Pacific Ridge

The main thing propping up this facility's profile is its elite nursing grade. In fact, we awarded this facility an A- in that category. Nursing grades are based largely on quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Inspections is another area where this nursing home excelled. In fact, we gave this nursing home an B+ for our inspections category. This grade is far more impressive than the facility's overall grade. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. This facility was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies an immediate threat to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

In addition, we also would like to point out that this facility received strong long-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our more favorable grades in this area, with a grade of B. For prospective patients seeking a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 85 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is a few points below what we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, we were pleased to find facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home's weakest area was short-term care, which is the last category we scored. For this category, we gave this facility a D. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last item we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 2.8 percent of its residents returning home.