Amherst Meadows

Although we did not rate this nursing home well overall, we would like to point out its decent inspection reports in recent years. We awarded it a somewhat respectable score of B- in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are quite insignificant. 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, CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.

This facility received its second most favorable category grade in the area of short-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of B- in this area, which is a decent grade. In calculating our short-term care scores, we size up a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This rating is considered to be a useful assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. We were surprised to find that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. It provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients that were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually well below the national average.

The third best area we awarded this facility in any category came in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of B-. Our long-term care ratings are important for residents looking for personal care. After we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. We were optimistic to find that this facility vaccinates 98.76033 percent of its residents for pneumonia. This place also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next category we graded was nursing, which turned out to be a weak spot for this nursing home. We awarded this nursing home a D in the area of nursing. Our nursing rating is mostly associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This place offered a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is not a very impressive figure. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing ratings. This place performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these statistics to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.