Alma Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center

In addition to being a strong facility overall, this place especially excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Not many facilities performed better in that area. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to create an immediate risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility really excelled in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A-. Only a select group of nursing homes performed more favorably in this area. For patients seeking a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 87.5 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which happens to be a bit below what we anticipated but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The third area we analyzed was short-term care. This facility received an above average short-term care score, with a B in this area. Short-term care scores are critical for patients seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The final measure we considered in this area is the percentage of residents that returned home from the facility. 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.

Switching gears to our fourth category, this nursing home was given a respectable nursing grade. While this was not as dominant as several of its other category grades, this is still not a poor grade. In determining our nursing ratings, we weigh both staffing levels and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.