Alaris Health at Kearny

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't 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.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its long-term care grade. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 97.86096 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. We scrutinized the qualifications of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the number of hours the nurses spent with residents, in computing our grade in this area. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The fourth area we scored is short-term care, where this facility was given a grade of A-. This rounded out a very favorable profile. Not many nursing homes earned an A- or better in each of our categories. Our short-term care ratings are important for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.