Elms Health Care Center

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of B- in that category. The nursing rating analyzes a handful of components, however, the main consideration is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Lastly, nursing grades also consider quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally an indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

This nursing home also didn't perform poorly in the category of short-term care. In fact, we awarded it a B- for that category, which turned out to be another one of its higher grades. Our short-term care grades are probably more meaningful for folks in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more skilled nursing. This means not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its number of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the metrics we assessed. The real question is whether this adversely affected quality of care. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

This facility also didn't perform poorly in the category of long-term care. In fact, we awarded it a C for that category, which turned out to be among its more favorable scores. Our long-term care ratings are essential for individuals requiring personal care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Candidly, we were a bit concerned this facility gave the vaccine to just 87.64045 percent of its patients. Fortunately, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our final category of inspections, this facility received a grade that's as bad as it gets. We weight this category more heavily than our other categories. For nursing homes with bad inspection ratings, you should really focus on any severe deficiencies found on their recent inspection reports. This particular facility had 6 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only favorable thing we found is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they created a threat to patient safety or health. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.