Elberta Health Care

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. In fact, its inspection grade was far better than its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave it an A+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite minor. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This nursing home performed well in nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which is one of our best grades. The nursing score weighs a handful of components, however, the paramount one is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Lastly, nursing scores also factor in quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a reliable indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.

This nursing home's third highest area came in the area of long-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. In the area of long-term care, we weigh the amount of care offered by a nursing home, as opposed to more sophisticated services. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 87.41722 percent of its residents. This is multiple points less than what we expected. Nevertheless, this nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final category we rated was short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of D for short-term care, rendering this the facility's worst category grade. In forming these short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics was damning for this facility's short-term care grade.