Alaris Health at Hamilton Park

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. Although this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its superb resume, this nursing home also excelled in our short-term care area. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that area. In determining these short-term care scores, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 6.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

The third area we looked at is long-term care. Adding to its first-rate profile, this nursing home also performed well in this category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A- for the area. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next category we scored was nursing. We awarded this facility a decent grade in this category, with a B-. Although this is not as high as several of this facility's other grades, it is still not a bad grade. Nursing ratings are mostly tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a somewhat concerning figure which is well below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility actually fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. In fact, it scored well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.