Hillside Heights Rehab Center

While this facility's overall score was not a highlight, it did receive a very good score in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B+ for that area, which is one of our better grades. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite minor. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

One of this nursing home's more respectable category scores was in the area of short-term care. This proved to be its second best category. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of C. Our short-term care grades are likely more critical for patients in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The important question is whether this adversely impacted quality of care. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. Our nursing rating weighs a host of datapoints. The most heavily weighted variable is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility provided just 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, although this nursing home got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in a few of our quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed well in this statistic.

The next category we rated is long-term care, which was this nursing home's worst area. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in that category. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. We were optimistic to learn that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.