Alden Estates of Northmoor

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility really outperformed its overall grade in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best grades in this category with an A-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively minor. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an B-. In computing a nursing home's nursing grade, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients as well as the level of skill of the nurses. This nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is significantly below the national average. Lastly, our nursing scores also factor in quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses to assist its residents.

The next category we analyzed was short-term care, where this nursing home was given a grade of B- in this category. In computing our short-term care ratings, we analyze a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This category is more often than not a useful assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually well below average.

The final area we graded is long-term care, which is a weak spot for this facility. We gave this nursing home a grade of just D for our long-term care category. For patients in need of a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 98.80342 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this facility also keeps its patients out of the hospital. It had just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.