Applewood

One of the reasons this place ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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 also was given an A+ for its long-term care grade. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep 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 number.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. We weighed the skill-level of nurses at the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses spent with patients, in calculating our rating in this area. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place New Jersey in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a resident more often.

Moving on to our final area, this facility was given an excellent short-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in that category, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This rating is typically a meaningful measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.