Villa at Florham Park, The

We also wanted to point out the fact that this facility has received near flawless health inspections recently. We gave them an A+ in this category. Inspection ratings are tied to many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also received an A+ for its short-term care grade. Our short-term care grade is often used to score a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to provide quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to have higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This nursing home excelled in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It provided more care from physical therapists and registered nurses than the average facility. This is an excellent sign. The last item we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it performed as well as just about any nursing home in New Jersey in this area with 68.5 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, at most facilities, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

Turning the page to our third category, this facility was awarded first-rate long-term care score. In fact, it received a grade of A in that category. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to providing elite levels of nurse staffing, this nursing home gave the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This percentage is also far better than the average nursing home. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Switching gears to the last area, this nursing home also performed well in the nursing category. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category. This rounded out a straight A profile. Our nursing rating is mostly based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This place provides an incredible 5.8 hours of nursing care per patient each day. Out of this total, many of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the most highly trained levels of nurses. In addition to providing high levels of care, this place also fared well in some of the quality measures we looked at. In terms of the number of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility outpaced the national average.