The Oaks at Whitaker Glen-Mayview

The Oaks at Whitaker Glen-Mayview is located in the large metropolitan area of Raleigh, North Carolina. With an overall grade of B, this looks like a good option. In fact, we found this facility to be better than the majority of the nursing homes in Raleigh, which has a city grade of B-. This place's impressive profile was highlighted by its inspection rating, which is addressed in the next section.

In addition to being a quality facility overall, this place really excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A. Not many facilities fared better in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a dominant short-term care grade. In fact, short-term care is its second best category score. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of A-. In the category of short-term care, we seek to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. This place provides more services with physical therapists and registered nurses than most facilities we looked at. This is certainly an encouraging sign. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the majority of nursing homes in the country with 55.7 percent of its patients able to return home.

In addition, this nursing home earned high marks in the area of nursing. It earned one of our highest grades in that area with an A-. Our nursing rating assesses the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home boasts a really impressive 5.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day, of which a significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses. This is one of the more highly trained levels of nurses. On top of offering impressive levels of nursing care, this facility also performed well in several of the quality measures we assessed. In terms of the number of its residents suffering falls resulting in major injury, this facility performed as well as any facility the nation.

The final category we assessed was long-term care. Sadly, it received an F in this area, which is a very poor score. We wouldn't simply disqualify a nursing home as a result of a single poor score though. When facilities receive this type of grade in this category it is typically a bad sign for resident care and it may mean that the place is not as well-staffed. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 91.735535 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is a few points less than we anticipated but still a reasonably acceptable figure. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 1.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.