Alden Courts of Shorewood

We want to point out that this facility outperformed its overall grade in the category of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent government inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest grades in that area with an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. While this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility's short-term care rating is one of its better scores. The nursing home was given a B- in this area. Our short-term care grades are important for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional skilled nursing. This means a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. We found that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. In fact, it offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. Our nursing score features a variety of datapoints. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, while this facility got dinged a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of our quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared well in this statistic.

The last category we assessed was long-term care, which ended up being a low point for this facility. We gave this facility a grade of just D in long-term care. For patients looking for a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. We were pleased to find that this nursing home vaccinated 99.0566 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place also fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.