Elston Nursing & Rehab Centre

While this facility's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually didn't perform terribly in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B- for that category, which is one of our better scores. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. This facility was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to resident 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.

Remarkably, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B- for our nursing rating, which isn't a bad grade. Our nursing score is primarily tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. While this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it fared well in this area. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving a patient more often.

We were also pleasantly surprised to discover that this facility received a decent short-term care score in our assessment. We awarded it a C in that category. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to create a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its level of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the measures we assessed. The last metric we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 4.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

The last category we rated was long-term care, where this facility was given a rock bottom score in this category also. We gave it a lowly F in this category, which is obviously somewhat alarming. Nursing homes that do not score well in this category often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in a few of the areas of routine personal care we looked at. One of the criteria we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours is vaccines. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to a relatively low 86.89655 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this facility actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.