Alston Brook

While we were not high on this nursing home overall, we awarded it an A for our inspections rating. This score is far more impressive than the nursing home's overall grade. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

Unfortunately, this facility only received a D for its long-term care rating, which turns out to be one of its more favorable category grades. For residents looking for a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. On top of considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 99.66555 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.

We gave this facility a grade of just D for our short-term care score. This is not one of our better scores. In the area of short-term care, we try to evaluate indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. With a score in this range in this category, we weren't surprised to learn that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing figures we assess. In fact, it offered substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most nursing homes. The final metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 5.2 percent of its residents returning home. This was quite a bit below average.

Switching gears to our next category, this facility really didn't fare very well here either. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in nursing, this is really as bad as it gets. We looked at the licensure of nurses employed by the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses worked with patients, in determining our grade in this area. This place averaged just 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident each day. To go along with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this place also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing grades. We looked at the percent of patients sustaining major falls and pressure ulcers. This facility had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home.