Elm Heights Care Center

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled in long-term care, where it received an A+. Few facilities fared better in this category. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. After looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility 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 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also received a virtually flawless government inspection. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that area with an A+. This is one of the few facilities to receive multiple A+'s. Inspection grades are tied to items found on the a nursing home's recent inspections. Nursing homes that score well in this area have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that the inspectors did not consider 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.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A- in our nursing category. We looked at the levels of nurses working for the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time the nurses were with patients, in calculating our score in this category. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving patients at least once a day.

In the final category, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for our short-term care rating. This finished off a very strong report card. Our short-term care grades are important for individuals in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing. This includes a wide scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.