Emerson Rehabilitation & Transitional Care Unit

In addition to being an elite nursing home overall, this facility performed well in our inspections category, where it received an A+. Very few facilities performed as well in this area. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this area typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. It doesn't look like we were able to find deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to note the fact that this facility was awarded an impressive score of A in our short-term care category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This rating is typically a solid assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. It doesn't appear that this nursing home submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. We assessed the skill-level of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time the nurses were with patients, in calculating our rating in this area. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of turning a patient at least once a day.

In the final area, this facility also was awarded an excellent long-term care grade, with a B+. This completed an elite report card. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.