The Elms Center

The Elms Center is a small nursing home located in Milford, New Hampshire. We gave this facility an overall grade of C. A score of this caliber requires some decent scores. Based on our ratings, there are definitely much worse places out there. The best part of this facility's profile was its remarkable inspection score. Inspection grades are discussed in the next section.

While this nursing home's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Another one of this nursing home's better category scores came in the category of long-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a B. It actually outpaced most facilities in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 98.35165 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. This nursing home was also able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had just 1.15 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a substantially lower hospitalization rate than most nursing homes.

This facility was given its next highest category grade in the category of short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a C in this category, which is a decent score. In the category of short-term care, we try to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the typical facility. The last item we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that it was respectable in this area with 45.8 percent of its patients returning home.

Turning to our fourth area, this nursing home really did not perform very well. With an abysmal grade of F in nursing, this is its worst grade. Our nursing grade assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. On top of being below average in nursing hours per resident, this facility also had poor marks in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in both of these statistics. This is a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. These statistics pulled down this nursing home's nursing rating significantly.