Care Connection Rahway

On top of performing well overall, this nursing home earned a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it earned one of our highest grades in that area with a grade of A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively insignificant. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this facility fared very well in our short-term care category. We gave them an elite grade of A+ in this category. Our short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a broad spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 7.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we assess the amount of time nurses commit to residents and the levels of training of those nurses. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In the final category, we gave this facility an A+ for our long-term care grade. This topped off a very impressive report card. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. One of the criteria we considered on top of nurse's aid hours is vaccines. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this nursing home provided vaccination data. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.