Alden Long Grove

While this nursing home's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Inspection grades are tied to many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This facility was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A few relatively minor dings aren't something to panic about.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility an B. Our nursing score focuses on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This facility also received an impressive long-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded it a B in that category, which is one of our more favorable scores. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 98.664444 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to the fourth area, this facility was awarded a grade of C in short-term care, which is generally an acceptable grade. In the category of short-term care, we seek to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below average.