Alaris Health at West Orange

To go along with a favorable overall grade, we awarded this facility an A+ for inspections. Inspection grades are based on items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. 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 also was given a very strong short-term care grade. This actually ended up being its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility a score of A-. In our short-term care score, we strive to craft a sound barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze the facility's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 5.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. Our nursing rating assesses the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of the nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final category we scored was long-term care. This nursing home was given a strong long-term care score in our assessment, with a grade of B-. While this was not nearly as dominant as some of its other scores, this remains an acceptable rating in that category. Our long-term care grade assesses a nursing home's personal care instead of the highly skilled therapy or healthcare services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. After we finished looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. We were pleased to discover that this facility vaccinates 98.96907 percent of its patients against pneumonia. This place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.