The Earlwood

This nursing home's best category score came in the area of nursing. In that area, we gave this nursing home a B+. It outpaced most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing grade looks at the facility's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Another one of this nursing home's more favorable category grades came in the category of short-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. It actually fared better than most facilities in this category. Our short-term care grade is generally used to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To provide highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to provide higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The last statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility's inspection grade was yet another category grade that was superior to the facility's overall grade. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a B. Our inspection scores weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area generally have few severe deficiencies. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Our next category is long-term care, in which we awarded this nursing home a grade of B- in that category. Long-term care grades are generally used to gauge a nursing home's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services offered by a rehabilitation facility. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 99.53917 percent of its patients, which is higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.