Avante at Mt Dora

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility really excelled in the category of long-term care, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed more favorably in this area. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. One of the datapoints we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 95.66474 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to minimize negative health outcomes for the aged 65 and up population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B in this area. We analyzed the levels of nurses working for the facility, as well as the number of hours the nurses worked with residents, in computing our score in this category. This facility provided 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 when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Switching gears to our next category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D for short-term care. This was the facility's worst category grade. Nevertheless, we wouldn't focus exclusively one bad category. Our short-term care ratings are believed to be more meaningful for those needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. 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 metric we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 3.9 percent of its residents returning home. This was quite a bit below the national average.