Alaris Health at Castle Hill

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this facility earned an A+ inspection grade. This score is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can pay to a facility. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite minor. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

To complement its elite assessments in other areas, we awarded this facility a score of A for its short-term care score. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to qualify indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Nursing scores are primarily based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final area we scored is long-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a B. Even though this is its poorest category score, this is nevertheless an impressive score. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. Once we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 99.78166 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.