Avalon Care Center – Keizer

While this facility's overall grade was not a highlight, it did receive a very good grade in the category of inspections. We awarded it a B for that category, which is one of our better grades. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to be an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We also want to point out that this facility received a decent grade in our nursing category. We awarded it a grade of B- in the area. Nursing grades are largely based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This figure is significantly below average. Lastly, nursing ratings also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

The next area we assessed was short-term care, where this facility received a C in this category. Our short-term care scores are believed to be more meaningful for residents requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional skilled nursing services. This includes not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The last item we considered in this category is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Switching gears to the last category, we gave this nursing home a grade of D in our long-term care category. This was the nursing home's least impressive category rating. Long-term care grades in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We found that this nursing home administered the vaccine to just 89.440994 percent of its patients, which is well below average. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This is its best feature in this category.