Atrium Post Acute Care of Preton

With an address in Princeton, New Jersey, Atrium Post Acute Care of Preton is one of a mere two nursing homes in this city. We gave it an overall grade of C, which is a middle of the road score. In our view, this facility would be a good fit for most people. One of the better aspects of this facility's report card is its strong inspection rating, which is addressed in the next paragraph.

This facility received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its nearly flawless inspections in recent years. We gave them an A- in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B in that category, which is one of our better scores. Our nursing grade is largely tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 2.9 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these datapoints as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The next highest area we gave this facility in any category came in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of C. In computing these short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to devise a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. This nursing home is respectable both in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 34.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually below the national average.

The final area we looked at is long-term care. It received an abysmal F in this area, which is a bottom of the barrel grade. This is obviously a major disappointment. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 86.91206 percent of its patients. This is significantly lower than the national average. Finally, we looked at its number of hospitalizations. Here we found that this facility had 2.1 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, this figure is also a cause for concern.