Crystal Oaks

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A+. Very few places fared this well in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively minor. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was awarded a top-shelf long-term care grade. In fact, this ended up being this facility's second strongest category score. In that area, this facility received a grade of A. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next area we looked at is short-term care. Contributing to its top-shelf resume, this facility also performed well in this category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A- for the category. Our short-term care scores are likely most important for individuals requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually requires more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home's weakest area is nursing, which is the final area we scored. For this area, we awarded this facility a D. We wanted to point out this possible weak link, but you should not focus exclusively on a single bad category either. Nursing grades are based in large part on nurse staffing levels. This facility averaged only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. While this nursing home's nursing hours are below average, it surprised us in a few of the qualitative data points in this category. In particular, we were pleased to find that its residents are experiencing fewer pressure ulcers than the national average.