Elm Wood Center at Claremont

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality facility is that it earned an impressive inspection grade. Inspections is its best category. In this area, we gave this facility an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite insignificant. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This nursing home received an impressive short-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our better grades in that category with a score of B+. Our short-term care grades are likely more critical for people needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing rating focuses on the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.3 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we analyzed was long-term care, which was this nursing home's weakest category. We awarded this nursing home a D in that area. Naturally, this category pulled down the nursing home's overall grade a bit. Facilities that do not fare well in this category often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in a few of the areas of routine healthcare services we looked at. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated a relatively low 88.37209 percent of its patients, which is not a very encouraging sign. Surprisingly, this facility actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.