M M Ewing Continuing Care Center

This facility received a strong overall score as described above, but we especially wanted to point out its excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this area. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area usually have very few severe deficiencies. Although this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

An additional quality feature for this nursing home is that it was given a favorable long-term care score. In fact, this proved to be its second best category grade. In this category, we gave this facility a B+. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 97.23577 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a dangerous health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. We analyzed the skill-level of nurses employed by the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses worked with patients, in determining our grade in this area. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Switching gears to our fourth category, we gave this facility a D for the area of short-term care. This was the facility's weakest category grade. Sadly, this category hurt the nursing home's overall grade a bit. In calculating these short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Finally, we looked at the number of residents that eventually returned home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.