Alliance Health at Abbott

To go along with its first-rate overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A for its nursing grade. Our nursing grade focuses on the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home averages 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also was strong in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a score of A. Not many facilities fared better in this category. Nursing homes that do well in this category typically provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 99.07407 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The third area we assessed was short-term care. Adding to its elite resume, this facility also performed well in this area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A in the area. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to devise a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. 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. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a score of A. This finished off a straight A report card for this nursing home. Inspection grades are based on several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.