Hillside Nursing Center of Wak

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Our inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area tend to have few severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government 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.

Adding to its impressive resume, this facility also performed well in our long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a score of A for that area. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 99.3311 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a dangerous ailment for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning the page to our next area, this nursing home was given a strong short-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- in that area. In our short-term care assessment, we endeavor to create a fair measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze a facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. We weren't able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The final metric we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The final area we assessed is nursing, in which this nursing home was awarded a B. Believe it or not, this was this nursing home's weakest category. A facility could be doing a lot worse when their weakest grade still outperforms most other nursing homes. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with quantity of nursing care available. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these metrics as reliable measures of the caliber of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.