The Elms of Cranbury

On top of being a great nursing home overall, it also earned A+ inspections recently. Its inspections were nearly flawless. Our inspection scores weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. This facility was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was superb in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Not many facilities performed better in this area. Our short-term care ratings are critical for patients needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 7.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A-. Our nursing score is largely associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Moving on to our last category, this nursing home received an extremely favorable long-term care rating. In fact, we gave it a B+ in that category, finishing off one of our more impressive report cards. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.