The Estates at Excelsior

To pair with its excellent overall score, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our nursing rating. In calculating our nursing scores, we weigh both staffing levels and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving residents more frequently.

Adding to its strong resume, this nursing home also performed well in our short-term care area. In fact, it received a score of A for the category. In computing our short-term care scores, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

Moving on to our next category, we awarded this facility a D for our long-term care category. This is the facility's least impressive category score. However, we would not focus exclusively a single weak grade. If you are seeking services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care ratings. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. As it turns out, this nursing home vaccinated a relatively low 87.755104 percent of its patients, which is somewhat alarming. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best feature in this category.