Ellis Residential & Rehabilitation Center

To pair with its strong overall score, we awarded this place an A+ for our inspection category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite minor. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means 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 an excellent sign.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing score is largely based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also performed well in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A-. Not many nursing homes fared better in this area. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 95.726494 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next area we scored was short-term care. We awarded this facility one of our better grades in this category, with a B. While this was not as dominant as several of its other grades, it is nevertheless a perfectly acceptable grade. In forming our short-term care ratings, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 4.4 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.