Knolls of Oxford

In addition to being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A+. Very few facilities performed this well in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received an A+ nursing grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. Nursing scores are primarily tied to a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 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 facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also was given a first-rate short-term care score. In fact, this ended up being this facility's third most impressive category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a score of A. Our short-term care grade is generally employed to measure a facility's rehabilitation services To provide good rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have better levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Moving on to our last category, this facility received a very strong long-term care score. We awarded it an A in that category, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are well cared for. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.