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 received an impressive grade of A in our nursing 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 0.3 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.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, we awarded them one of our higher grades in our long-term care category as well, with a grade of B+. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 93.26923 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be slightly lower than we were hoping for but still a respectable figure. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The final area we assessed was short-term care, where this facility was awarded a B+. This completed a very strong profile. Few facilities received a B+ or higher in all four categories. Short-term care grades are based in part on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.