Calera Manor

Although we gave this facility a horrible overall score, we awarded it a grade of A- for our inspections score. This score is far more impressive than the nursing home's overall grade. Inspection grades are based on pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these reports. You should especially avoid nursing homes with severe deficiencies associated with endangerment of patients. This nursing home was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to create an immediate threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home also didn't grade out poorly in the area of long-term care. In fact, we gave it a C in that category, which wound up being among its more respectable scores. Our long-term care grade focuses on a nursing home's assistance with daily living instead of the skilled therapy or healthcare services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Additionally, we gave this nursing home an F in the category of short-term care. In determining our short-term care ratings, we look at the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This category is more often than not a solid measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. Based on its score in this area, we weren't stunned to find that this nursing home is well below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the data we assessed. Honestly, this was about what we expected to find. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics doomed this nursing home's short-term care grade.

The last area we rated is nursing. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this category, which is a very poor score. Nursing ratings are heavily correlated with nurse staffing levels. This nursing home offered a meager 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is well below average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This facility performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these statistics to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.