Elms Retirement Village

The primary reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our higher scores in that area, with an A. This is a much better grade than the place's overall grade, which was decent but certainly not elite. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few relatively minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the category of short-term care. This proved to be its second best category. In that area, we awarded this facility a B-. With our short-term care category, we attempt to create a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we assess a nursing home's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents 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's third highest category ended up being long-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B-. Long-term care grades are based in part on a facility's quantity of nursing care. This means a broad spectrum of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine medical services. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Fortunately, this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is a very respectable figure. This place keeps its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final category we rated is nursing, proved to be this nursing home's weakest area. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in that area. This really is one of just a couple of weak points of a very solid report card. Our nursing score analyzes many subcategories, however, the paramount one is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This place averaged a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is not a very impressive figure. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these statistics to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.