Pataskala Oaks Care Center

While we did not rate this nursing home favorably overall, we want to point out its relatively favorable inspections in recent years. We gave it a B+ in this area, which is much better than its overall grade. Inspection ratings are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important thing to look for on these reports. Most importantly, you should avoid facilities with severe deficiencies associated with risks to resident well being. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We also awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of long-term care, with a C. In computing our long-term care ratings, we analyze the assistance with daily living offered to a nursing home's patients. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. We were concerned by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated only 54.10628 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Nevertheless, this facility 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.

This facility's next highest category ended up being its short-term care score, where it was awarded a grade of C. Our short-term care scores are vital for prospective residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This means a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. We found that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. The facility offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The next area we assessed was nursing, turned out to be this nursing home's weakest area. We gave this facility a grade of D in that area. When determining our nursing ratings, we analyze both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is not a very impressive figure. On top of ranking below average in nursing hours per resident, this nursing home also had poor marks in the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of patients experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This place was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in both of these statistics. This is a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. These metrics helped pull down this nursing home's nursing rating quite a bit.