Heritage Health-Elgin

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility has received near flawless health inspections recently. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Inspection scores are based on several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To add to its first-rate assessments in other areas, we gave this nursing home a score of A- for its short-term care score. Our short-term care scores are considered to be most important for patients requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional skilled nursing. This means not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. When computing a nursing home's nursing rating, we look at the amount of time nurses are with residents as well as the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The last area we graded was this facility's worst category. Nevertheless, even its worst category would likely be a strength for most nursing homes. We awarded it a strong grade of B in long-term care. When nursing homes receive this type of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.