Alternative Nursing Care Inc

What this costs you

If a doctor certifies the patient is homebound and needs skilled nursing or therapy, Medicare pays this agency directly and the patient pays nothing for the covered visits. Equipment is billed separately at 20% of the Medicare-approved amount. Home health does not pay for round-the-clock care, meals, or help with bathing and dressing on its own, those are the costs families are most often surprised by. Medicare spends 1.17× the national average per episode of care at this agency. That is what the federal government spends, not what a family pays, and it is not part of our grade.

• Patient experience

  19.5 / 30

  What patients said about the agency afterwards, in the CMS-run HHCAHPS survey, the only federal home health measure that comes from patients rather than from the agency.

  • No patient survey published, CMS suppresses results below a minimum number of completed surveys. Scored just under the national average rather than guessed at, because suppression tracks how small an agency is, not how good it is

• Staying home

  10.25 / 25

  Whether patients stayed living in the community afterwards, and how often they went back to hospital for something home health should have caught.

  • 36% of patients went on living in the community rather than moving into a facility (national median 84%)
  • No preventable-readmission rate published, scored just under the national average rather than guessed at

• Recovery at home

  13 / 20

  How much of the expected improvement in dressing, bathing and moving around patients actually reached by the time care ended, risk-adjusted by CMS for how they arrived.

  • No discharge function score published, scored just under the national average rather than guessed at

• Care transitions

  10.15 / 15

  Whether the patient and their next doctor were handed an accurate, current medicine list when home health ended, the handover where things get missed.

  • 96% of records reached the next doctor or facility (national median 88%)

• Starting on time

  10 / 10

  How often care actually began within the window the doctor ordered, or within two days of leaving hospital.

  • 100% of patients had care started on time (national median 97.8%)

Did it work?

Home health is judged on whether the patient stayed home, stayed out of hospital and got more capable. These are this agency's numbers against the national median.

What patients said

CMS has not published survey results for this agency. It only reports them once enough patients have completed the questionnaire, so smaller agencies often have none. That is a gap in the data, not a mark against the agency, ask them directly how many patients they served last year and whether they run their own survey.

Services offered

• ✓ Skilled nursing care
• ✓ Physical therapy
• ✓ Occupational therapy
• ✓ Speech pathology
• ✓ Home health aide
• · Medical social services

Published, and deliberately not graded on

Before weighting anything we checked which direction each CMS measure actually runs, by comparing it against the patient survey across every agency in the country. These did not survive that check. They are here because they are part of the public record, and out of the grade because scoring them would make our letters worse, not better.

Falls with major injury

5.71%

Also runs backwards, in every size band. It appears to measure whether an agency records adverse events rather than whether they happen. Left out of the grade.

Medicare spending per episode

1.17× the national average

A cost measure with no relationship to what patients reported. Left out of the grade.

Other agencies nearby

Questions families ask about Alternative Nursing Care Inc

Does Medicare pay for Alternative Nursing Care Inc?

Yes, if a doctor certifies the patient is homebound and needs intermittent skilled nursing or therapy. Medicare then pays Alternative Nursing Care Inc directly for covered home health visits and the patient pays nothing for them. Durable medical equipment is billed separately at 20% of the approved amount. Home health does not cover round-the-clock care, meals, or help with bathing and dressing on its own.

Do patients stay at home after Alternative Nursing Care Inc finishes?

36% of this agency's patients were still living in the community rather than in a facility after care ended, against a national median of 84%. CMS risk-adjusts this rate for how sick the patients were when they started.

How is Alternative Nursing Care Inc graded?

ElderGrade grades it C, average, scoring 63 out of 100 on the federal home health record: what patients themselves reported, whether they went on living in the community and stayed out of hospital, how much function they regained, whether the handover to their next doctor was done, and whether care started on time. We take no payment from agencies.

What services does Alternative Nursing Care Inc provide?

CMS records this agency as offering skilled nursing care, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology and home health aide. Which of them you actually receive depends on what the doctor writes into the plan of care.