Oaks Health Center at the Marshes of Skidaway Island

Oaks Health Center at the Marshes of Skidaway Island is just one of 11 possibilities in Savannah, Georgia. It looks like this nursing home is among the most impressive nursing homes we assessed. In fact, it was given our absolute highest score. In fact, we ranked this facility in the top fifth of all nursing homes in the country. Finally, this appears to be a very consistent facility with consistent scores in all four of the major categories we assessed. More information about these categories can be found below.

One of the many reasons this place turned out to be a quality nursing home is it earned an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this critical category. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was strong in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After looking at the impressive nursing hours provided by this nursing home, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is much higher than the average nursing home. This combination proved to be successful as this facility was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. Our nursing rating focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This facility boasts a really impressive 5.2 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, of which a significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses. This is one of the most highly trained levels of nurses. This is one of the higher totals of nursing hours we found at any facility. On top of looking at levels of nursing care, we also looked at a few quality measures in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these areas as predictive indicators of the quality of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The fourth category we graded was short-term care, where this facility was awarded a grade of A-. This completed a very impressive profile. Few facilities earned an A- or better in all four categories. With our short-term care assessment, we try to craft a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at the nursing home's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. One of this nursing home's strength is that it offers more hours of care from registered nurses to its residents. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who returned to the community from this facility. We found that it outperformed the majority of facilities in the nation with 49.8 percent of its patients returning home. This is a higher rate than most nursing homes.