Hillcrest Care Center

This facility received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially want to emphasize its nearly flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another quality feature for this facility is that it was awarded a favorable long-term care grade. Indeed, this proved to be its second best category score. In that area, we awarded this facility a B+. For residents seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 92.413795 percent of its patients, which is a few points lower than we were hoping for. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home also received an impressive short-term care score. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B+ in this category. Our short-term care ratings are probably more important for folks requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The final area we rated was nursing, in which this facility received a B. This nursing home did not end up having any weak spots. Our nursing grade features a number of subcategories. The most important variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.