Essex Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an excellent inspection grade. Its inspection score was far better than its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A-. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This nursing home was hit with 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this nursing home's more favorable category grades was in the category of long-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+. Facilities that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The third area we graded was short-term care, where this facility received a B- in this category. In calculating our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The last category we rated is nursing. We awarded this facility a D in our nursing category, rendering this the facility's least impressive category. There are many subcategories included in this grade. Most of these subcategories are tied to staffing levels. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is not a very impressive figure. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing ratings. This nursing home performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these statistics to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.