Alta Gardens Care Center

On top of earning a strong overall grade, this nursing home performed even better in our inspections category which is based on the facility's recent government inspections. We awarded it an A for that category, which is one of our best grades. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple relatively minor deficiencies aren't something to panic about.

This facility fared well in the category of long-term care. Indeed, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our better grades. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 98.4985 percent of its residents, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home received its next highest category grade in the area of short-term care. We awarded this facility a B- in this area, which is a decent grade. In the area of short-term care, we seek to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. We weren't able to track down registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this place. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 5.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.

The last category we assessed ended up being this facility's weakest category. Nevertheless, even in its worst category we still awarded it a respectable grade of B- in nursing. There are a number of subcategories included in this area. Most of the data points reflect the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This facility averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily, which is not an impressive total. Finally, our nursing ratings also factor in quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its residents.