Southern Ocean Medical Center

Southern Ocean Medical Center is a facility located in Manahawkin, New Jersey, a city with a population of 24,285 people. With an overall rating of A+, this facility is without a doubt a top-shelf facility. In fact, we were so impressed with this facility that we rated it as the best nursing home in Manahawkin. As you will see below, this place performed equally well in our category scores. We gave it a straight A report card!

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down information about this nursing home's deficiencies. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we assessed this facility so highly is that it received an A+ short-term care score. This is flat out as elite as it gets in this category. In calculating our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. This nursing home is the gold standard when it comes to skilled nursing staffing. In fact, it supplied approximately one and a half times as many physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the typical nursing home. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of nursing homes in the country with 69.7 percent of its residents returning home. This is a significantly higher rate than most facilities.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our nursing rating considers a number of factors. The most heavily weighted one is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This nursing home provided 6.7 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, which is among the more impressive figures in the country. A significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the most highly skilled levels of nurses. We were really impressed by both of these figures. In addition to offering high levels of nursing care, this facility also excelled in the quality measures we assessed. It performed as well as any facility in New Jersey when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

The fourth category we rated is long-term care, where this facility was given a grade of A. This finished off a first-rate report card. Very few facilities earned an A- or better in every category. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate information on vaccination rates. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.