Elderwood at Ticonderoga

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Inspection scores are based on many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area typically have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this nursing home also was awarded favorable long-term care scores this year. In fact, we gave it one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a score of B. For patients seeking a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 89.0411 percent of its patients. This is somewhat lower than we anticipated. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, at least this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility was awarded its third best category grade in the area of short-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of B- in this category, which is a reasonably acceptable grade. Our short-term care scores are based on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a vast range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The last area we rated was nursing. We awarded it a C in this category. This is a perfectly acceptable grade in this area. In determining our nursing grades, we analyze both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared well in this statistic. This is often a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving a patient at least once a day.