Landmark of Elkhorn City Rehabilitation and Nursing

While this nursing home's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category typically have few of these severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

This nursing home also performed favorably in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A-. Very few facilities fared more favorably in this area. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also earned a strong nursing rating. We gave it an above average grade of F in this area. Our nursing score looks at the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This facility provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is well below average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing ratings. This nursing home fared well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these metrics to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.

The final category we looked at is short-term care, which turned out to be this nursing home's least impressive area. It received a lowly F in this category, which is certainly very disappointing. Short-term care grades are often used to measure a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To provide highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer better levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Considering its score in this area, we were not surprised to find that this facility is well below average in terms of the number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the metrics we looked at. Honestly, this was what we expected to find. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 3.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.