Avalon Care Center-Portland

To pair with its favorable overall score, we gave this nursing home an A+ for inspections. Our inspection scores account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this category usually have few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong assessment, this nursing home also received a superb long-term care score, with a grade of A-. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 97.36842 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our nursing score is mostly associated with a facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we scored was short-term care, in which this nursing home received a B. Even though this is its least impressive category grade, this is nevertheless a quality rating. Our short-term care scores are important for prospective residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.