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.

An additional quality feature for this facility is that it received an above average long-term care grade. Indeed, this turned out to be its second best category score. In this category, we awarded this facility a B+. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.37556 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. We weighed the qualifications of nurses working for the nursing home, in addition to the number of hours the nurses were with residents, in computing our grade in this area. This facility averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is not an impressive total. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It performed well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

The last category we scored was short-term care. This facility received a C for the area. Our short-term care grades are arguably most important for residents requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. We were not able to find information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we considered the number of patients who eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below the national average.