Maple Glen Center

In addition to faring well overall, this nursing home received a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest scores in that category with an A+. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category generally have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Nursing ratings are based in large part on quality and quantity of nursing care. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility New Jersey in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving a patient more often.

Turning our third category, this facility received an excellent short-term care score. In fact, it received a grade of A in this area. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to assess a nursing home's rehabilitation services In order to provide highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to feature better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The final area we scored is long-term care, where this facility received an A-. This topped off a very favorable report card. Few nursing homes earned an A- or higher in each of our categories. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.