Hillside Manor Nursing Home

Hillside Manor Nursing Home is one of five nursing homes located in Washington, Indiana. With an overall rating of A-, this facility is ranked among the more impressive nursing homes we looked at. In fact, we were so impressed with this facility that we rated it substantially ahead of the overwhelming majority of the facilities in Washington. This facility's strong report card was highlighted by its long-term care score, which we will address in the next paragraph.

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an A+ long-term care grade. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.6 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home.

The next category we looked at was inspections, where this facility also received an A+ grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't 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.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. We analyzed the qualifications of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses worked with patients, in computing our rating in this category. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Indiana in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning patients at least once a day.

The final category we rated turned out to be this nursing home's weakest category. Nevertheless, even in its worst category we still awarded it an acceptable grade of B- in our short-term care category. With our short-term care category, we attempt to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess the facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to find registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this nursing home. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 20.6 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.