Elm Heights Care Center

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also performed well in the area of inspections, where it earned an A+. Very few facilities performed this well in this category. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was given an A+ for its long-term care grade. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. One of the factors we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize unnecessary deaths for the elderly population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Our nursing score includes a handful of factors, but the main consideration is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final area we assessed was short-term care. We gave this nursing home a decent score in that area, with a B-. Even though this wasn't as dominant as many of its other grades, it is nevertheless not a poor grade. Our short-term care scores are likely most meaningful for people in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. We were not able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents that were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 4.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.