Avenue at Macedonia

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our best scores. Inspection scores account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category usually have very few severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

In addition, we also wanted to note that this facility was awarded positive long-term care marks in this assessment. We gave them one of our better grades in that area, with a B. This turned out to be the facility's second strongest grade. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. One of the statistics we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 94.618835 percent of its residents. This is a proven method to avoid negative health outcomes for the elderly population. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of B- in this category. Our nursing score is based on several components, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, our nursing ratings also consider quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

This facility's worst category was short-term care, which is the last area we looked at. Sadly, it received an abysmal F in this area. Even with some acceptable grades in other categories, this grade is still concerning so we wanted to draw your attention to it. In calculating our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to devise a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. In this place's case, we found that it offers fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the average facility. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.