Manahawkin Convalescent Center

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection grade. Its inspection grade was far superior to its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave this facility an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

This nursing home also was given a positive grade in our long-term care category. We gave this facility an above average grade of B in this area. Facilities that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. After we finished looking at the volume of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to another strength for this facility, it also earned an elite nursing score. In fact, we gave this facility a grade of D. Our nursing rating focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the number of hours spent with residents. This place offered only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing ratings. This facility performed well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.

The next area we analyzed was short-term care, which proved to be a weak spot for this nursing home. We gave this nursing home a D for our short-term care category. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This area is more often than not a fair measure of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Not surprisingly, we discovered that this nursing home provides far less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than a typical facility. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 4.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.