Brookdale Burr Ridge

In addition to being a quality facility overall, this nursing home excelled in our short-term care rating, where it earned an A. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. Our short-term care grades are probably more meaningful for those in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 5.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home an A for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

This facility really excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing rating is based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final area we rated was long-term care, which ended up being this nursing home's worst category. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in this category. Nevertheless, we would not judge this facility solely on a single category, since it had several excellent grades in other categories. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this nursing home gave the vaccine to only 79.166664 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This was its best feature in this category.