Elkhart Meadows

In addition to being an elite facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A+. Very few places fared this well in this category. Arguably the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place received 8 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received a very impressive long-term care grade. In fact, this is its second strongest category score. In that category, this facility received a score of A. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. The nursing score is based on quite a few factors, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a patient even once per day.

The final category we rated was short-term care. We gave this nursing home one of our more favorable scores in this category, with a B. Even though this was not on par with some of its other scores, it is still a fine score. In our short-term care rating, we strive to forge a fair barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess a nursing home's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.