Highland Health Care Center

With an address in Highland, Illinois, Highland Health Care Center is one of a mere two nursing homes in the city. This nursing home was awarded an overall grade of B-, which is a solid score. At the end of the day, this facility looks like a good fit for most people. Lastly, this facility had an ownership change in the last year, so we will need to take a closer look to see how new ownership affects this facility's performance measures.

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

We also awarded this facility a favorable grade in nursing. This facility earned a grade of B+ in this category, which is one of our better grades. Our nursing grade is largely associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these statistics as predictive measures of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The next category we assessed is short-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B. It actually performed better than most facilities in this category. In computing these short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to devise a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The last item we looked at in this category is the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 44.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The last area we rated was long-term care. We awarded it a grade of C in that area. This is not a bad grade in this category. Our long-term care ratings are crucial for individuals requiring non-healthcare services such as personal care. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, we looked at the facility's number of hospitalizations. Here we found that this facility had 2.48 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, this figure was less favorable than its other scores in this category.