Aurora Nursing Center

Although we weren't high on this facility overall, we gave it a B- for short-term care. This score is more respectable than the place's overall grade. In determining our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This rating is considered to be a useful assessment of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the average facility. The hope is that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.

We also awarded this facility a grade of C for our nursing rating. Our nursing rating is largely associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. It scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care provided.

The next category we graded was long-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a C. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to the final area of health inspections, we gave this nursing home a grade of C for our inspection category. Inspection grades weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. This facility was hit with 4 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but none were category G through L deficiencies. This tells you it dodged the more ominous categories of deficiencies. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.