Altercare of Nobles Pond

In addition to earning a strong overall grade, this nursing home also received an elite short-term care grade. We gave them one of our higher scores in that area, with a grade of A-. Short-term care scores are based on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. We weren't able to locate registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This facility really excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing grade is mostly tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving a resident more frequently.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. This facility was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

The next area we rated was this nursing home's poorest area. Nevertheless, even in its worst category we still gave it a decent grade of C in our long-term care category. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this nursing home administered the vaccine to only 80.55556 percent of its residents. On a more positive note, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.