Altercare Cambridge

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home excelled in our shot-term care category. In fact, we gave it an A- for that category. In the category of short-term care, we seek to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The final item we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning the page to our next area, this facility was awarded a top-shelf long-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a score of A- in this category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. 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 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The last category we graded was nursing, where this nursing home received a B. This actually was this facility's worst category. A nursing home could be doing a lot worse when it's lowest score still is superior to most nursing homes. Nursing ratings are mostly based on a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.