Dimensions Living - Prospect Heights

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great facility is that it earned a strong short-term care score. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of A. In determining our short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is considered to be a solid assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this area is the number of patients who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Adding to its strong profile, this facility also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we gave it a score of A for that area. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life or death illness for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Racking up yet another strong category grade, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning to our next category, this facility received a very strong nursing score. We awarded it a grade of A in this area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. There are a variety of factors included in this area. Most of the factors reflect the quantity of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.