The Oaks Nursing & Personal Care Homes

To go along with a strong overall grade, we awarded this facility an A+ for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to this facility's list of strengths, it also received a high-end long-term care grade. We awarded them a dominant strong of A- in this area. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the datapoints we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. This facility didn't perform quite as well in this category as it did in some other categories. Nevertheless, this is still a respectable score. The nursing rating analyzes several components, many of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This place provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

The last category we scored is short-term care, in which this nursing home was given a C. This actually turned out to be this facility's weakest area. This is still not the end of the world. Short-term care scores are meaningful for residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. This means a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. We weren't able to track down registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The last item we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.