Elderwood at Williamsville

Elderwood at Williamsville is a large facility located in Buffalo, New York. We gave this nursing home an overall grade of B+. A score in this range requires strong marks in most areas. Even in a city featuring 20 other nursing homes, this one caught our attention as a superb selection. This place is stronger in some categories than others, but it didn't have any bad scores in any of the major categories discussed below. More information about these categories can be found below.

We also wanted to emphasize that this nursing home earned near flawless inspections recently. We awarded them an A+ in this category. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

An additional quality feature for this facility is that it was awarded a very positive short-term care grade. Indeed, this wound up being its second best category score. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B+. Short-term care grades are based on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. This facility excelled in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered more care from physical therapists and registered nurses than a typical facility. This is often an encouraging sign. The final measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that it fared better than most nursing homes in this area with 51.8 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, at most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

This nursing home also was given a strong long-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this category. When nursing homes receive this type of score in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. One of the factors we considered in addition to this nursing home's impressive nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 99.69651 percent of its residents. Vaccines are a great way to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for seniors. This combination proved to be successful as this place keeps its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final category we rated was nursing, where this facility was given a B-. This was this facility's weakest area. This is still not a bad grade. The nursing score assesses a handful of components, many of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This particular facility provided 4.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This was well above average. Furthermore, a significant portion of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. Lastly, our nursing grades also weigh quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed better than average in this metric. This is typically an accurate indicator of how carefully a nursing home's nursing staff is tending to its patients. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses and better safety protocols are in place.