Altenheim Health & Living Community

On top of being a strong nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled in our inspections category, where it earned an A. Not many nursing homes fared better in this category. Inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

An additional strong feature for this nursing home is that it received an above average short-term care score. Indeed, this proved to be its second best category grade. In this area, we gave this nursing home a grade of B+. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. We scrutinized the qualifications of nurses working for the facility, as well as the number of hours the nurses worked with patients, in determining our rating in this category. This facility averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

The final category we graded is long-term care, turned out to be this facility's weakest area. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in that category. This is one of the few dings on a strong profile. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category likely don't provide the type of consistent around the clock care that some other nursing homes provide. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated just 86.56716 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.04 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This is its best feature in this category.