Hillcrest Care Center

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection grade. In fact, its inspection score was far superior to its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave this facility an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite minor. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

We also gave this nursing home a solid grade in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a C. Our long-term care ratings are more meaningful for patients in need of more traditional assistance associated with activities of daily living. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to a relatively low 82.089554 percent of its patients, which is quite a bit lower than we expected. Nevertheless, this nursing home keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. When determining our nursing ratings, we weigh both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This facility provides only 0.2 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a somewhat discouraging figure as it is well below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility actually fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

The next category we graded is short-term care. This facility was awarded a grade of C in the area. In computing our short-term care grades, we assess the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is more often than not a fair measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the measures we assessed. The real question is whether this also affected quality of care. The final measure we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 4.3 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.