Alaris Health at the Chateau

Alaris Health at the Chateau is a nursing home in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, which has 5,530 people. We awarded this nursing home an A overall grade, ranking it in the top 20 percent of all nursing homes in the nation. We really can not say enough good things about this facility. One of the major highlights of this facility's exemplary profile is its inspection score. We discuss inspections in the next paragraph.

One of the many reasons this place turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it earned an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical area. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This facility was given quality marks in the category of short-term care. Consequently, it was given one of our most impressive grades in that area with a score of A+. In our short-term care grade, we endeavor to create a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we assess a facility's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. This place excelled at the highest level in two key staffing areas we assessed. The facility provided about 50% more care from registered nurses and physical therapists than a typical nursing home. This is usually an encouraging sign. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from this nursing home. In addition to excelling in the area of physical therapy hours, we found that it performed as well as just about any nursing home in the nation with 66.6 percent of its residents returning home. Most facilities are below 50 percent in this statistic.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Our nursing score includes several datapoints, however, the primary consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provided 5.9 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This was one of the higher totals we found. In addition, we found that a significant percentage of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. On top of offering impressive levels of nursing care, this facility also performed well in several of the quality-based metrics we looked at. For example, in terms of the number of its patients suffering falls leading to serious injury, this facility performed as well as any nursing home the state. Preventing serious falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses and better safety protocols are employed.

The final area we assessed is this nursing home's worst category. However, even in its weakest link we still gave it a decent grade of B- in our long-term care category. Our long-term care grade focuses on a nursing home's personal care instead of the highly skilled therapy and healthcare services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. After considering the impressive nursing hours provided by this nursing home, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is higher than the average nursing home. This combination proved to be effective as this place also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.