Aristacare at Norwood Terrace

To go along with its relatively modest overall score, we gave this nursing home an A+ for our inspections rating. This is far more impressive than the facility's overall rating. Inspection scores are based on many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to be an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

Unfortunately, this nursing home only received a D for its short-term care score, which ended up being one of its better category grades. In our short-term care category, we strive to forge a valuable measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the nursing home's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Considering its grade in this area, we weren't surprised to learn that this nursing home is well below average in terms of the quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents based on the data we assessed. The final metric we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics was damning for this facility's short-term care score.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a score of D. Our nursing grade is based on several datapoints. The most important variable is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care.

The last area we looked at is long-term care, proved to be this nursing home's weakest area. We awarded this nursing home a D in this category. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means the facility did not perform well in our quality measures relating to patient care. On top of assessing the amount 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 76.646706 percent of its residents. This is quite a bit below the national average. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.