Complete Care at Mercerville

This nursing home received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially would like to emphasize its nearly flawless inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this category. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

In addition, this facility also received favorable long-term care grades this year. Indeed, we awarded it one of our higher grades in that area, with a grade of B. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.04 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also was awarded an impressive short-term care score. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B in this area. Our short-term care grades are critical for prospective residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This includes a wide range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The next category we assessed is nursing. We awarded it a B- in this area. This is a perfectly acceptable grade in this area. The nursing grade weighs many data points. The most heavily weighted one is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a lower figure than we were hoping for. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place surprisingly fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. It scored well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.