Avamere Heritage Rehabilitation of Tacoma

Although we did not rate this nursing home favorably overall, we want to point out its much more favorable nursing grade this year. We gave it a B in this area, which was much better than its overall grade. We looked at the qualifications of nurses employed by the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses spent with residents, in calculating our score in this area. This nursing home provides 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 facility 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 often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility's second highest area turned out to be its short-term care grade, where it received a B-. Our short-term care ratings are likely more important for folks requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing. This means not just nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. We were surprised to find that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. The facility provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The final measure we considered in this area is the number of residents that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.7 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This facility earned slightly below average inspections in recent years. We awarded them a grade of C in this category. Inspection scores are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important item to look for on these inspections. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This facility was assessed 9 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were in any of the categories labeled G through L. This tells you that inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to be an imminent danger to resident safety or health. Lastly, we want to point out that this facility received some government fines recently. Fortunately these were on the lower end of the spectrum. However, this still isn't what we hoped to find.

This facility's worst category was long-term care, which is the final area we analyzed. In this area, we gave this facility a grade of D. Nursing homes that don't score well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in a few of the areas of routine medical care we assessed. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 78.832115 percent of its residents. This is pretty significantly less than the national average. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.