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 0.3 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.

Unfortunately, with a grade of D in the inspection category, this facility performed relatively poorly in that area. Inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we found is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they created a risk to patient health or safety. 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.

The next category we graded is long-term care. This nursing home was given a poor grade of F in this category. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means the facility didn't perform well in our measures relating to resident care. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. We were concerned by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated just 53.124996 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.