Alden Estates of Skokie

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

An additional reason we assessed this nursing home so highly is that it was given an A+ short-term care grade. This is simply as elite as it gets in this category. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

Turning our third area, we awarded this facility a score of A for its long-term care grade. This is a very impressive grade. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In the last area, this nursing home also was awarded a first-rate nursing rating, with a B+. This rounded out a very impressive profile. In determining our nursing ratings, we look at both nursing hours and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.