English Valley Nursing Care Center

In addition to faring well overall, this nursing home earned a nearly flawless inspection report. Therefore, it earned one of our best grades in that area with an A+. Inspection grades are based on many datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was elite in the area of long-term care, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Nursing grades are largely based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final category we looked at is short-term care, in which this facility received a grade of B-. This proved to be this nursing home's worst area. This is nevertheless not a terrible score. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.