Alden Estates of Shorewood

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ inspection score. This grade is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the best complements we can offer a facility. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this area usually have very few severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so well is that it was given a strong short-term care grade. Indeed, short-term care turned out to be its second most favorable category score. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a score of A. In calculating our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is often a reliable assessment of the facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 5.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. Our nursing grade assesses the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of training of the nurses and the quantity of hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally an indicator that a place has quality controls in place.

The final category we scored is long-term care, where this nursing home was given a C. This proved to be this nursing home's worst category. This is nevertheless not a terrible score. For prospective residents looking for a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. One of the statistics we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 92.78351 percent of its patients. Nevertheless, this nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.