Elderwood at Ticonderoga

To go along with its decent overall grade, we gave this nursing home an A for its inspection grade. This score is far better than the facility's overall score. Inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to create an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this facility's more impressive category scores came in the category of long-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a B. For prospective residents looking for a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 88.255035 percent of its patients. This is slightly below what we expected but still a decent figure. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also awarded this facility a respectable score in the area of short-term care, with a grade of C. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well below the national average.

Moving on to the fourth area, we awarded this facility a D for nursing. This was the facility's worst category grade. Sadly, this category hurt the facility's overall grade to a certain degree. Nursing scores are primarily associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home offered only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is an alarmingly low total. On top of receiving below average marks for total nursing hours, this place was less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing grades. We looked at the percent of patients suffering pressure ulcers and found that this place was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in this metric.