Brickyard Healthcare – Elkhart Care Center

While this nursing home's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually didn't perform terribly in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a C for that category, which is one of our better scores. These inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was hit with 10 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but none were in categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, we need to note that this place was assessed government fines recently. Fortunately these fines were on the lower end of the spectrum. However, this isn't what you want to find.

This nursing home really excelled in the area of nursing, where it earned an C. Few facilities performed better in this area. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with a facility's level of nurse staffing. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a relatively low total compared with most nursing homes. Finally, although this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of our quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed well in this area.

We awarded this facility just a D for our long-term care grade. This is well below average in this category. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means the facility did not perform well in our quality measures relating to resident care. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. Frankly, we were a bit concerned this nursing home vaccinated 82.01219 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is quite a few points below average. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This was its best score in this category.

The final category we looked at is short-term care. This facility received a very poor grade of F in this category. Short-term care grades are vital for prospective residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a vast range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. With a score in this range for this category, we weren't surprised to find this place was below average in several staffing metrics we assess. The facility provided far fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.