Complete Care at Mercerville

One of the reasons this ended up being a strong nursing home is that it received a very impressive inspection score. In fact, inspections is its best category. In that area, we awarded this facility an A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively minor. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

Another one of this facility's above average category grades came in the category of long-term care. We gave them one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a grade of B. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are well cared for. After considering the quantity of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a life or death condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. Our nursing score is based on numerous datapoints. The most heavily weighted variable is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically a reliable indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.

The final area we looked at is short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this area. In calculating these short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below the national average.