Alden North Shore Rehab & Hcc

On top of being a strong facility overall, it also earned A+ government inspections in recent years. Its inspections were nearly flawless. Our inspection scores account for several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. 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 nursing home also was strong in the category of short-term care, where it received a grade of A. Not many facilities received a better grade in this category. Our short-term care ratings are arguably most critical for residents needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to our fourth area, this facility received a decent long-term care grade. Even though this was not nearly as impressive as some of its other category grades, this is really not a terrible score. Our long-term care grade is often used to judge a nursing home's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services provided by a skilled nursing facility. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. Frankly, we were a bit alarmed this nursing home vaccinated 47.67442 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be quite a bit lower than average. Nevertheless, this facility excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.