Alaris Health at Castle Hill

On top of receiving a strong overall score, this place also earned first-rate health inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in this category, with a grade of A+. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

Additionally, this facility also was given favorable short-term care grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our more favorable grades in that area, with a grade of B+. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. There are a host of subcategories included in this category. Most of the criteria are tied to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a reliable indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses to assist its patients.

The next category we scored is long-term care. We awarded it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. In computing these long-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's personal care services. After looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 99.77679 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.