Hackensack Meridian Health Prospect Heights Care Center

In addition to faring well overall, this nursing home received a nearly flawless inspection report. Consequently, it received one of our best scores in that category with an A+. Inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the government inspectors 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 inspection reports are rare in the industry.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its short-term care grade. Short-term care ratings are important for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. In computing a facility's nursing score, we assess the quantity of hours nurses are caring for residents as well as the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home New Jersey in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a patient more frequently.

The final category we graded is long-term care. In that category, we gave this facility an impressive grade of B. Facilities that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 94.44444 percent of its residents, which is higher than the average nursing home. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.