J G Alexander Nursing Center

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive profile, this facility also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, it received a grade of A for that area. When facilities receive this kind of score in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. The nursing rating features several subcategories. The most heavily weighted variable is the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Switching gears to the fourth category, this nursing home was awarded a decent short-term care grade. Although this wasn't quite as elite as several of its other category grades, this is really a middle of the pack score. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech 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. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we looked at in this category is the number of residents that returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.