Alden Estates of Skokie

We also wanted to point out that this nursing home earned near flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave them an A+ in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this nursing home received superb marks in the area of short-term care. Consequently, it received one of our best grades in that category with a grade of A+. In the area of short-term care, we seek to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they 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 6.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Turning the page to our third category, this facility was awarded first-rate long-term care grade. In fact, it received a score of A in that category. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down this place's vaccination data. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In our last area, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for its nursing rating. This completed a very favorable profile. Our nursing grade analyzes quite a few data points, however, the paramount one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these statistics as predictive measures of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.