Extendicare Health Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it earned an impressive nursing grade. In this category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A. Our nursing grade consists of quite a few subcategories, however, the most important consideration is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In addition, this nursing home also earned a nearly flawless government inspection report. As a result, it received one of our best grades in that category with an A. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't 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.

We also would like to emphasize the fact that this facility was awarded a strong grade of A in our short-term care area. Short-term care grades are often employed to judge a facility's rehabilitation services In order to have good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to provide better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

In our final area, we gave this nursing home an A for its long-term care score. This wrapped up an elite report card. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.