Autumn Lake Healthcare at Waugh Chapel

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. There are many factors included in this area. Most of the factors relate to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 1.1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning a patient at least once a day.

This top notch nursing home also was superb in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A+. Only a small group of facilities performed better in this category. In determining our short-term care grades, we analyze a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This category is considered to be a meaningful assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

In addition, this nursing home also received excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best grades in that category, with an A. Our inspection grades account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area tend to have few severe deficiencies. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The fourth area we analyzed is long-term care, where this facility received an A-. This completed a very favorable profile. Not many nursing homes received an A- or higher in each of our categories. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 97.24138 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.