Alcott Rehabilitation Hospital

This nursing home earned a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially wanted to emphasize its excellent nursing rating. We gave them an A- in this category. Our nursing grade looks at the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. 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 nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also performed well in our inspection category, which is based on the facility's recent government inspections. We gave it a grade of B+ for that category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. This facility was hit with 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This facilities next most favorable category is short-term care. We awarded it a grade of B- in this area. This is essentially a middle of the pack grade in this category. Our short-term care grades are considered to be most critical for patients in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing. This means not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

The last category we scored was long-term care. This facility was awarded a grade of C for this area. For residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. Thankfully, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. This nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.