Colonial Manor of Elma

In addition to being a great nursing home overall, it also received A+ government inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this facility had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor dings aren't necessarily the end of the world.

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. Our nursing grade looks at the facility's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Building on its high-end resume, this nursing home also was given a superb short-term care grade, with a score of A-. Our short-term care grades are believed to be more important for individuals in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires more highly-skilled nursing. This means not merely nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility 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. The last measure we considered in this category is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The final area we graded is long-term care. This facility was given a better than average nursing grade in our assessment, with a B. Although this is not quite as impressive as many of its other category grades, this remains one of the better scores for that area. Facilities that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 98.51852 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.