The Oaks at Bethesda

In addition to receiving a strong overall score, this facility also earned an elite short-term care grade. We awarded them one of our higher grades in that area, with an A. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 6.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

In addition, this nursing home also performed well in inspections, which is based on the facility's government inspections. In fact, we awarded it an B+ for that category. Inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. This facility received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to be an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor dings are not necessarily the end of the world.

This nursing home is also strong in the area of long-term care, where it was awarded a score of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this area. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is a good sign for patient care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Switching gears to the final category, this facility was given a respectable nursing score. While this wasn't as good as several of its other scores, this is truly not a bad grade. When determining our nursing scores, we assess both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we look at quality-based metrics, such as the percentage of residents who suffered pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these statistics are measures of the quality of nursing care.