Calera Manor

Although we gave this place a poor overall grade, we gave it a grade of B for our inspections category. This was the result of the facility receiving a decent government inspection report this year. Inspection ratings are based on items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key item to look for on these reports. Most importantly, you should avoid nursing homes with severe deficiencies linked to risks to resident well being. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

Incredibly, we gave this facility a C for its long-term care rating, which really isn't too bad of a score. Our long-term care ratings are more meaningful for individuals needing more conventional assistance associated with personal care. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccines. Thankfully, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. Lastly, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.04 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Tragically, this facility received an F for its short-term care grade. Short-term care ratings are critical for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional skilled nursing services. This includes a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this facility provides far less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the typical nursing home. The last item we looked at in this category is the percentage 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 patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics doomed this nursing home's short-term care score.

The last category we graded is nursing. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F for this category, which is a poor score. When computing a nursing home's nursing rating, we assess the amount of time nurses commit to residents as well as the levels of training of those nurses. This facility averaged only 0.2 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing scores. This facility fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.