The Actors Fund Home

This facility received a quality overall score as described above, but we especially wanted to point out its nearly flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility fared well in the category of long-term care. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- for that category, which turns out to be one of our higher grades. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 85.947716 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be a few points less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next category we assessed was short-term care. This nursing home received a favorable short-term care score, with a B in the area. Our short-term care ratings are considered to be more critical for people requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing. This means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The next area we rated is nursing. In that area, we gave this nursing home a solid grade of C. This turned out to be this facility's weakest category. Our nursing score is largely tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This place provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Finally, we like to look at quality-based statistics, such as the percentage of patients who suffered pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these data points are measures of the quality of nursing care.