​Elwood Care Center & Assisted Living

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After we finished assessing the amount of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 97.5 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also received a virtually flawless government inspection. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with an A+. This is one of the few facilities to receive multiple A+'s. Inspection ratings are based on many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This place was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing grade is primarily tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning patients at least once a day.

In the final area, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for our short-term care rating. This completed a first-rate profile. Our short-term care ratings are thought to be more important for individuals requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.