Van Rensselaer Manor

This facility received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially want to point out its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded it an impressive grade of A- in this category. Inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this category tend to have very few 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an B+. When calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we assess the number of hours nurses spend with residents as well as the skill levels of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home also was given a strong long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it an above average score of B+ in this category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 99.347626 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Switching gears to the last area, this facility was given a decent short-term care score. Even though this isn't quite as impressive as several of its other category grades, this is truly not the end of the world. In computing these short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to create a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 4.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.