Bria of Chicago Heights

While we did not rate this nursing home well overall, we would like to note its decent health inspections in recent years. We gave it a relatively respectable score of B- in this area. Inspection grades weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We would not recommend this facility under any circumstance.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of B-. Nursing scores are primarily tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is significantly below average. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. While this nursing home got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared remarkably well in this metric. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a resident more frequently.

This facility received its next best category grade in the category of short-term care. We gave this facility a grade of C in this area, which is a reasonably acceptable score. In determining these short-term care scores, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to formulate a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its level of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the metrics we assessed. The real question is whether this adversely affected quality of care. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The final category we assessed was long-term care, which turned out to be a low point for this nursing home. We awarded this facility a grade of just D in our long-term care category. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means the nursing home did not perform well in our measures relating to patient care. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 93.01588 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be somewhat less than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable figure. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.