Atrium Post Acute Care of Ellsworth

Atrium Post Acute Care of Ellsworth is a small facility located in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. This facility was awarded an A- overall, which is among the highest grades that we offer. A score of this caliber requires superb marks across the board. We could not find many bad things to say about this facility. Its ratings are just impeccable. The best part of this nursing home's impressive profile was its inspection reports. Inspection reports are discussed in the next section

On top of earning a strong overall grade, this facility also received excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our highest grades in that category, with an A. Our inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this category generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility was given a favorable long-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that area with a grade of B+. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. One of the datapoints we considered after nursing hours is vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.59 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes.

This facility was given an impressive short-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we assess a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is generally a useful measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. One of this place's strengths is registered nurse hours. This facility offers more care from registered nurses to its residents than most facilities. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that it performed decently in this area, with 48.3 percent of its residents returning home.

Moving on to our fourth category, this facility was awarded a highly favorable nursing score. Although this isn't nearly as impressive as a few of its other grades, this is nevertheless one of the more impressive scores a facility can receive. We weighed the levels of nurses working for the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses worked with patients, in determining our score in this category. This nursing home provided 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident daily. At least one fourth of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. This is a high percentage of skilled nursing. In determining our nursing scores, we apply more weight to care provided by registered or licensed nurses. Finally, we also factored a few quality-based metrics into our nursing grades. This facility was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.