Elizabeth Care Center

We also found that this facility excelled in our long-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 98.305084 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary deaths for the aged 65 and up population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. We weren't able to find deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. In calculating a nursing home's nursing rating, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses are with patients and the level of licensure of the nurses. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning residents at least once a day.

The next area we rated is short-term care. This nursing home was awarded an above average short-term care grade this year, with a C. While this wasn't as good as a few of its other grades, this is still a decent score in that area. Our short-term care grade is often used to measure a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.