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.

Sadly, this nursing home's third best category was long-term care. However, with a D in this category, it still fared somewhat poorly. Facilities that don't fare well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in a few of the areas of routine medical care we assessed. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Candidly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home gave the vaccine to only 42.857143 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.

Turning our final category of inspections, this facility received a grade that's as bad as it gets. You should pay close attention to any deficiencies on a facility's inspection reports when it receives this poor of an inspection grade. We suggest you scrutinize the level of severity of those deficiencies. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we found is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they posed a risk to resident safety or health. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.