Hackensack Meridian Health Prospect Heights Care Center

In addition to being a strong facility overall, it also received A+ government inspections recently. Its inspections were nearly perfect. Inspection scores are tied to pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. 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 excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Our nursing rating is mostly based on the nursing home's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home 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 many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning a patient more frequently.

The next area we analyzed was short-term care. This nursing home also was awarded an A+ short-term care grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. In the category of short-term care, we strive to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients that were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

In our last category, this nursing home also was given a first-rate long-term care rating, with an A. This finished off a rare straight A profile. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 97.14286 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the elderly population. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.