Oak Trace

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. This is what you like to see on an inspection report.

In addition, this facility was given dominant marks in the category of short-term care. For this reason, it was given one of our highest grades in that category with a grade of A+. Our short-term care ratings are presumably more critical for residents in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires additional skilled nursing. This means not only nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our nursing score consists of many components, however, the primary consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a patient at least once a day.

The final category we assessed was long-term care, in which this facility was awarded a grade of B. This actually is this facility's worst area. A facility could be doing a lot worse when it's weakest grade still beats out most nursing homes. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We weren't able to locate this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.