Altercare Newark South

On top of being a strong nursing home overall, this nursing home really excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A. Not many nursing homes fared better in this area. Arguably the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

Contributing to this facility's list of accomplishments, it also was given a superb short-term care grade. We awarded them an elite strong of A- in this area. Our short-term care grades are considered to be most meaningful for residents needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this facility submitted registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing grade assesses several factors, most of which are associated with quantities of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home's weakest area was long-term care, which is the last category we scored. For this area, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. For long-term care residents, the primary goal is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 98.92473 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.