Care One at Hanover Township

With an address in Whippany, New Jersey, Care One at Hanover Township is the sole option we identified in this city. This facility was awarded an A- overall, which is one of our higher grades. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top third of all nursing homes in the country. This facility's strong profile was highlighted by its inspection grade, which is addressed in the next paragraph.

To go along with a favorable overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for our inspection category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies aren't necessarily something to panic about.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its short-term care score. Our short-term care ratings are presumably most important for patients needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional skilled nursing. This means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. This nursing home excelled in the two key staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it supplied about 50% more care from registered nurses and physical therapists than the typical facility. This is typically an excellent sign. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it performed as well as just about any nursing home in New Jersey in this area with 62.6 percent of its patients returning home. With most facilities, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. In computing our nursing ratings, we factor in both nursing hours and the training levels of those nurses. This facility provides an incredible 4.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. Very few nursing homes provide this quantity of nursing care to their patients. Out of that total, many of the hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the more highly trained levels of nurses. On top of looking at levels of nursing care, we also looked at a few quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The final category we rated was long-term care. This nursing home received a better than average long-term care rating this year, with a C. While this isn't quite as dominant as many of its other category grades, this remains a respectable grade for this category. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. One of the factors we considered on top of this nursing home's impressive nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to avoid negative health outcomes for the senior population. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Although it had 2.07 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted score was better than most nursing homes since it had more complex patients.