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. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Moving on our next category, this facility was awarded a top-shelf long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a score of A in that area. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In the last area, we gave this facility an A+ for its nursing score. This completed an elite profile. Our nursing grade focuses on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility Illinois in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a resident even once per day.