Oak Ridge Manor

We awarded this facility one of our better grades in the area of long-term care, with an A-. This is a notably better grade than the facility's overall score, which was decent but not elite. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of B- for our inspections rating. This is a very respectable nursing score. Inspection scores are tied to items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important item to look for on these reports. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to resident safety. This nursing home was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe. This indicates that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to create an imminent risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

The third area we assessed is short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B-. Our short-term care grades are meaningful for residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.

The final category we looked at is nursing, which was this nursing home's worst category. It received an abysmal F for this category, which is clearly very disappointing. Our nursing category includes quite a few components, many of which are based on nursing hours. This place provided a meager 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. To go along with its below average totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this facility had poor marks in several of the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing scores. For starters, we looked at the percentage of patients experiencing falls which led to major injury. This place was at more than 150 percent of the national average in this statistic. This is quite concerning in light of the fact that many falls could likely be prevented with better nursing care. This ended up sealing the facility's fate of receiving a poor nursing score.