Avon Oaks Nursing Home

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also received a very impressive long-term care score. This actually is its second strongest category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a score of A-. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a dangerous condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next area we analyzed is short-term care. This nursing home was given an above average short-term care score, with a grade of B+ in this category. In the category of short-term care, we try to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

In the final category, this nursing home also received an impressive nursing rating, with a grade of B+. This completed a very favorable profile. Our nursing grade is primarily tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these statistics as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.