Hillview Terrace

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. These inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones 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.

Among this facility's other achievements is its first-rate long-term care grade. We gave them one of our strongest scores in that area, with a grade of A. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B. We analyzed the levels of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses worked with residents, in determining our grade in this category. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we rated was short-term care. This facility received an above average short-term care rating this year, with a grade of B-. Although this wasn't quite as strong as some of its other grades, this is nevertheless a decent grade for that category. Short-term care ratings are important for residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home submitted registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 4.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.