Elevate Care - North Branch

Even though we didn't rate this nursing home favorably overall, we want to draw your attention to its relatively favorable short-term care score. We awarded it a respectable grade of B in this area, which was much better than its overall grade. In calculating these short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Shockingly, this facility actually earned a good grade in the area of inspections as well. In fact, we gave it a B for that category, which is one of our better scores. Few nursing homes that were this poor overall received multiple category grades of this caliber. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. This nursing home received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of C. There are a host of datapoints included in this area. Most of the subcategories relate to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This place averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which is well below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

The final area we looked at is long-term care. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F for this area, which is a poor score. Facilities that don't fare well in long-term care often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in some of the areas of routine personal care we assessed. After considering the amount of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this facility vaccinated a relatively low 87.64846 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.