Aperion Care Highwood

While we graded this place incredibly poorly overall, it received a very impressive inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our more favorable grades in that area with a B+. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid nursing homes with too many deficiencies flagged. This facility received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

Remarkably, we gave this nursing home a grade of C for its short-term care rating, which really isn't too bad of a score. In the category of short-term care, we try to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its level of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the measures we assessed. The critical question is whether this also affected quality of care. The final measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This facility's next best category was nursing, but even there it received a grade of just D. This is still a well below average grade. Nursing grades are primarily tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This statistic is quite a bit below average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing ratings. This facility fared well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to our fourth category, this facility really did not fare well here either. With a very poor grade of F in long-term care, this is really as bad as it gets. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 89 percent of its residents. This is pretty significantly lower than what we were hoping for. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.