Oregon City Health Care Center

To go along with its strong overall score, we awarded this facility an A for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This facility received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to create an imminent threat to resident health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. There are quite a few subcategories within this grade. Most of these subcategories relate to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home is also strong in the area of short-term care, where it was given a grade of B+. It performed better than most facilities in this area. In determining our short-term care grades, we look at a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This category is typically a meaningful measure of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. We were not able to find registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The last area we scored is long-term care. We awarded this facility an acceptable score in that category, with a B-. Although this is not as favorable as a few of this nursing home's other grades, it is still not a major area of concern. Long-term care scores are essential for people seeking non-healthcare services such as personal care. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. We were optimistic to find that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.