Oakview Skilled Nursing

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively minor. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also want to note the fact that this nursing home received a top-shelf grade of A in our long-term care area. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a dangerous health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. Nursing scores are primarily tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning residents even once per day.

The last category we assessed was short-term care, where this facility received a B+. This topped off a very impressive report card. Not many nursing homes received a B+ or better in all four categories. Short-term care grades are often employed to judge a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To have good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to have higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.