Valley Oaks Care Center

To go along with its relatively modest overall grade, we gave this facility a grade of A- for our inspections rating. This score is far more impressive than its overall rating. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category generally have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

Additionally, we also would like to note that this nursing home was awarded favorable long-term care marks this year. We awarded them one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a B. This proved to be the facility's second best grade. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. One of the datapoints we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours was vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the elderly population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also gave this nursing home a decent score in the category of nursing care, with a grade of C. Our nursing score assesses quite a few components, most of which are associated with nursing hours. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of these quality metrics. With less than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this metric. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving residents at least once a day.

This facility's weakest category was short-term care, which is the final area we scored. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this category. Even with several solid scores in other categories, this score is still concerning so we felt obligated to draw your attention to it. Our short-term care grades are important for people needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Based on its grade in this category, we were not stunned to learn that this facility was well below average in terms of the quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents based on the measures we looked at. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the number of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 4.4 percent of its residents returning home.