Alaris Health at the Fountains

Alaris Health at the Fountains is located in Secaucus, New Jersey, a city with a total of 16,264 people. Featuring an overall grade of A-, this facility is one of the higher-rated nursing homes we assessed. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top third of all nursing homes in the country. This facility's impressive profile was highlighted by its inspection score, which we will address in the next section.

We also wanted to emphasize that this facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this category. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category typically avoided 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.

We also wanted to note the fact that this nursing home received a strong score of A- in our short-term care category. In determining these short-term care scores, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to formulate a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. This nursing home provides more services with physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. This is usually a favorable sign. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the majority of facilities in the country with 50.7 percent of its patients returning home. This is a higher rate than most facilities.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with quality and quantity of nursing care. This facility provided 3.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these datapoints as good indicators of the quality of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The last category we scored is long-term care, where this facility received a B. This actually proved to be this nursing home's least impressive category. A nursing home is doing something right when their worst grade still rates higher than most facilities. Facilities that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 99.898476 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. This facility also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 1.7 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.