Alpha Home - A Waters Community

Even though this facility's overall score was as bad as it gets, it didn't perform as badly in the area of nursing. We awarded it a C for that area. Our nursing grade is based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is significantly below average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures. Although this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it did very well in this subcategory. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving patients even once per day.

Among this facility's alarming category grades was an F for its inspection grade. More often than not, this means we found some red flags on the facility's inspection reports. For facilities with bad inspection ratings, you should focus on any severe deficiencies found on their inspection reports. This facility had 7 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only favorable thing we can say is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they caused a risk to patient health or safety. Finally, we also would like to point out that this place received significant government fines in recent years of over $100,000. This typically indicates that a nursing home'sbad performance spanned several years.

Unfortunately, we gave this facility an F for its long-term care score. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in long-term care likely don't provide the kind of consistent around the clock care that some other nursing homes provide. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were concerned by the fact that this facility vaccinated just 44.334976 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.

Moving on to the last area, this facility really did not perform well here either. Due to a poor grade of F in short-term care, this is just about as as uninspiring as it gets. In determining these short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Not surprisingly, we learned that this facility offers significantly less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than a typical facility. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who eventually returned home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.