St Luke's Elmore Long Term Care

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an A+ long-term care grade. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 95.918365 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This first-rate facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing grade is largely tied to a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place 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 the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving patients at least once a day.

This nursing home also received a nearly flawless government inspection report. It earned one of our top grades in that area with a grade of A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The fourth area we looked at was short-term care, where this facility was awarded an A. This topped off a very impressive report card. Few nursing homes earned an A- or higher in all four categories. Our short-term care ratings are likely more important for individuals in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.