Astoria Place of Waterville

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in that category with a score of B-. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. This particular nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report. Another area of concern is that 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 were also surprised to find that this facility received a decent nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of C in that category. Nursing grades are largely associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This place averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily, which is a very low figure. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this place got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this area. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning residents at least once a day.

Sadly, this facility's third best category was long-term care. Nevertheless, with a D in this category, it still performed relatively poorly. Facilities that don't score well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in a few of the areas of routine healthcare services we assessed. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We discovered that this nursing home provided the vaccine to a relatively low 64.259926 percent of its patients, which is somewhat concerning. To our surprise, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.

The last category we looked at is short-term care, proved to be this nursing home's weakest area. We awarded this facility a D in this category. With our short-term care assessment, we try to forge a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Considering its score in this area, we were not stunned to discover that this facility was well below average in terms of the quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours offered to its residents based on the figures we looked at. Honestly, this was about what we expected here. Finally, we considered the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.