Elkhart Meadows

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home was hit with 8 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to be an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. In that area, we gave this facility an A-. The nursing grade assesses a handful of components, most of which are associated with quantities of nurse staffing. This facility provided 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at a few quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility excelled in these areas, with excellent scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care a facility provides.

This facility also received a favorable long-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B+ in this category. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. One of the datapoints we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. This is a great way to minimize unnecessary deaths for the aged 65 and up population. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep 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 figure.

The next area we looked at was short-term care. This facility was given an impressive short-term care rating this year, with a grade of B-. While this wasn't as good as some of its other category grades, this is still a decent grade for that area. In our short-term care category, we strive to forge a valuable measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze a facility's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The final datapoint we considered in this area is the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.