J G Alexander Nursing Center

One of the many reasons this place turned out to be a quality nursing home is it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is simply as good as it gets in this very important category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite minor. This place was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home truly excelled in the category of long-term care, where it received a score of A-. Only a select group of facilities performed better in this area. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 99.06542 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to avoid unnecessary deaths for the elderly population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next area we assessed was short-term care. This nursing home was awarded a very positive short-term care score, with a grade of B in the area. Our short-term care scores are probably most meaningful for those needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The last area we analyzed is nursing. We awarded this facility one of our higher grades in this category, with a grade of B. This nursing home proved to be relatively strong in each category we looked at. Our nursing grade looks at the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses and the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.