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.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of B-. Our nursing grade includes many datapoints, however, the primary one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. It performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care provided.

The third category we graded was short-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of B- in this category. In determining our short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This grade is often a fair measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. The facility supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 5.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home. This figure was below the national average.

Turning to the fourth area, this facility was awarded an acceptable long-term care grade of B-. For prospective residents seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is more than the average nursing home. This place keeps 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.