Autumn Lake Healthcare at Chesapeake Woods

On top of receiving a great overall rating, this facility fared even better in our inspections category which is based on the facility's recent government inspections. We gave it an A- for that area, which is one of our highest scores. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being quite insignificant. This place was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this facility's impressive category scores came in the area of long-term care. We gave them one of our more favorable grades in that area, with a grade of B+. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. 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 gave the vaccine to 92.59259 percent of its patients. This is slightly lower than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to another strength for this nursing home, we gave them one of our higher grades in our short-term care category as well, with a B. With our short-term care category, we attempt to create a sound gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze a nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The final area we scored was nursing. This nursing home was awarded a B- for this area. There are several data points included in this grade. Many of these factors are tied to nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This figure is significantly below average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality measures. With less than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this area. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning a patient even once per day.