Altercare of Nobles Pond

We want to point out that this facility really outperformed its overall score in the category of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our best scores in this area with an A-. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies an immediate threat to resident safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

We also awarded this nursing home a favorable grade in short-term care. This facility earned a grade of B+ in this area, which turns out to be one of our better grades. In crafting our short-term care grades, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to formulate a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility 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 final item we looked at in this category is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of C in this category. The nursing rating consists of many factors, however, the most important one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. 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. Finally, nursing ratings also factor in quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a reliable indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its patients.

Switching gears to our last area, we awarded this facility a D in the area of long-term care. This was the facility's least impressive category rating. Sadly, this score hurt the facility's overall profile to some degree. Nursing homes that do not score well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in some of the areas of routine medical care we looked at. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccines. Candidly, we were a bit concerned this facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to just 83.22981 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually decent at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.