Elkhorn Healthcare & Rehabilitation

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really fared well in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Arguably the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Additionally, we also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home was given favorable long-term care marks in this assessment. We gave them one of our more impressive scores in that category, with a grade of B+. This turned out to be the nursing home's second highest score. If you are looking for anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care ratings. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 79.39914 percent of its patients. This is a bit lower than we expected. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, we were pleased to find place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home's next highest category came in the area of short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of C. Short-term care grades are crucial for residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more skilled nursing services. This includes a vast range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below average.

The final category we assessed is nursing. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this category, which is a poor grade. This is clearly a significant disappointment. We looked at the licensure of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the number of hours the nurses worked with patients, in determining our rating in this category. This facility provided just 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing ratings. This place performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.