Diamond Hill Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

Diamond Hill Nursing and Rehabilitation Center is an average-sized facility located in Troy, New York. We gave this facility an F, which is really a rock-bottom score in our grading scheme. If you are not satisfied with this facility's rather poor overall grade, you will be pleased to know there are four other nursing homes in Troy. If you aren't deterred by this facility's profile, you can continue reading to find out about its category grades. Inspection grades are discussed in the next paragraph.

Although this place's overall score was terrible, it fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B+ for that category, which is one of our better scores. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid nursing homes with a list of severe deficiencies flagged. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

Surprisingly, we awarded this facility a C for our short-term care grade, which isn't too bad of a score. Our short-term care ratings are based on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a wide range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Remarkably, this facility provides its residents with at least 50% more physical therapist hours per week than the average facility. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. It performed decently in this area, with 45.5 percent of its residents returning home.

Unfortunately, this facility only received a grade of D for its nursing grade, which was actually one of its better category grades. In determining a nursing home's nursing score, we look at the amount of time nurses are seeing residents and the level of licensure of the nurses. With only 2.8 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, this nursing home's nurse staffing levels were quite a bit below the national average. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this nursing home also did not perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining major falls and pressure ulcers. This facility had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility. This may be a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these statistics hurt this facility's nursing grade significantly.

The next area we looked at was long-term care, where this facility was given an abysmal grade here also. Sadly, it received a lowly F in this category, which is obviously a major concern. For patients seeking a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 99.73118 percent of its residents, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this nursing home also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 1.41 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.