Avalon Care Center-Portland

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this facility excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A. When calculating our nursing ratings, we look at both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to our next category, this facility also received a grade of B for its long-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this category. 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. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 97.33333 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a dangerous ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not leave this to chance. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final category we rated was short-term care. We gave this nursing home one of our better scores in that category, with a grade of B. While this isn't as high as some of this facility's other grades, it is still a positive grade. In our short-term care score, we attempt to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze a nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.