Altenheim

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also received A+ inspections in recent years. Its inspections are virtually flawless. Inspection ratings account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category tend to have very few severe deficiencies. This nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies an immediate risk to patient safety or health. A couple relatively minor dings are not necessarily the end of the world.

This facility truly excelled in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a score of A-. Few nursing homes performed more favorably in this area. In determining these short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

This nursing home also was given a favorable long-term care score. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B in this area. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 99.66888 percent of its patients. This is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next area we looked at is nursing. We awarded this nursing home a solid grade in that category, with a grade of B-. Even though this is not as high as a few of its other scores, it is still a middle of the pack score. We scrutinized the levels of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the quantity of time those nurses spent with residents, in determining our grade in this area. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, while this nursing home got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of our quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this metric.