Forest Manor

Forest Manor is a nursing home located in Northport, Alabama, a city with a total of 37,522 people. With an A- overall grade, we ranked this facility in the top third of all nursing homes in the country. As far as we can see, this facility ought to be a wonderful choice for just about anybody. This nursing home's strong report card was highlighted by its inspection reports, which we will address in the next paragraph.

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this nursing home excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be quite minor. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing rating is primarily tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides an impressive 4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. Lastly, this place also performed well in several of the quality-based metrics we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility performed better than the national average. This is usually a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented with better nursing care and having a policy of regularly turning residents to avoid bed sores.

We also want to alert you to the fact that this facility received a first-rate grade of A- in our short-term care category. Short-term care grades are typically used to grade a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation To provide highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to offer better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the number of patients who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that it performed better than most nursing homes in this area with 53.1 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, at most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

The last category we analyzed ended up being this facility's poorest category. Nevertheless, even in its weakest link we still awarded it an acceptable grade of C for our long-term care category. Long-term care grades are meaningful for individuals looking for non-healthcare services such as personal care. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 91.20459 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be a few points less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. On a more positive note, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.45 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes.