Elderwood at Williamsville

In addition to receiving a great overall score, this nursing home also earned top notch government inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A. Our inspection ratings are tied to many pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This facility received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility received a strong long-term care score as well. We gave it one of our better grades in that category with a score of B+. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 97.78761 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death health condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't take any chances. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The third best category we gave this nursing home in any category came in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a B-. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home. This figure was below average.

Turning to our fourth category, this facility was awarded a decent nursing grade of B-. There are a number of subcategories included in this area. Many of the factors are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, our nursing ratings also consider quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this place actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses to assist its patients.