Alden Courts of Shorewood

To pair with its strong overall performance, we gave this place an A for our inspections rating. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

Among this facility's other strengths is its elite nursing grade. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A-. Nursing ratings are primarily based on the nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Additionally, this facility also received favorable long-term care scores in our assessment. Indeed, we awarded it one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a grade of B+. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 95.53571 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The last category we scored was short-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of B-. This was this facility's weakest area. This is nevertheless not the end of the world. In crafting our short-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to formulate a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 3.7 percent of this facility's residents returned home.