Alpha Manor Nursing Home

The main reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its excellent inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A+. This is a much better score than the place's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Inspection grades are based on many datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facility performed well in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it an C for that category, which is one of our highest grades. Nursing ratings are primarily based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. Although this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this area. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving patients at least once a day.

This nursing home's second least favorable category is short-term care, where it earned a grade of just D in that category. This is a well below average grade. In determining our short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. With a grade of this caliber in this category, we weren't surprised to find that this place was below average in the two key staffing figures we focus on. The nursing home supplied substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The final measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.3 percent of its patients returning home.

Turning to the fourth category, this facility really didn't perform very well. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in long-term care, this was its worst area. Nursing homes that do not fare well in this category often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in some of the areas of routine medical care we looked at. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility administered the vaccine to just 90.66148 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.