Hillview Nursing & Rehabilitation

One of the reasons this place is a quality nursing home is that it earned a very impressive inspection rating. Inspections is its best category grade. In this category, we awarded this facility an A+. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in 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 safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility really excelled in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A. Only a select group of nursing homes performed better in this category. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are well cared for. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the elderly population. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facilities next best area was short-term care. We gave it a grade of C in this category. This is essentially a middle of the pack grade in this category. In computing our short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This category is typically a solid assessment of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. We were not able to locate registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this place. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 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.

Switching gears to our next area, this nursing home was given a C for nursing, which is a respectable grade. When computing our nursing ratings, we analyze both nursing hours and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a lower figure than we were hoping for. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.