Arlington Heights Health and Rehabilitation Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

Adding to its profile, this nursing home also earned a grade of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this area. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. 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 one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. Our nursing rating assesses many components, however, the paramount one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving patients even once per day.

The next category we scored was short-term care. We awarded it a C in that area. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. Short-term care grades are generally used to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to have highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of patients that were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 4.3 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually well below the national average.