Autumn Lake Healthcare at Arlington West

One of the reasons this turned out to be a decent facility is that it earned a very favorable inspection grade. In this area, we gave this facility a B+. Arguably the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Based on this, we had positive view of this facility's recent inspections.

This nursing home also was given a strong grade in our short-term care category. We gave this nursing home a better than average grade of B in that category. Our short-term care grades are meaningful for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing services. This includes a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return home from this facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. Our nursing score is primarily tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure as it is well below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. While this place got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this subcategory. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving a patient more frequently.

Turning to our fourth category, this facility really didn't fare very well. With an abysmal grade of F in long-term care, this is this facility's worst category. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is a bad sign for patient care and it may mean that the facility is not as well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 92.27941 percent of its residents. This is a bit less than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable figure. To our surprise, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This is its best score in this category.