Hillcrest Home

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this facility performed well in our inspections category, where it received an A+. Very few places fared this well in this category. Inspection grades are tied to several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

An additional reason we rated this facility so favorably is that it received an A+ short-term care score. This is simply as strong as it gets in this area. In our short-term care category, we attempt to forge a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess the nursing home's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

We also would like to emphasize the fact that this facility was awarded a dominant grade of A- in our long-term care category. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we assessed the volume of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 99.085365 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In our last category, this nursing home also was awarded an impressive nursing rating, with a grade of A-. This completed a rare straight A report card. The nursing grade considers several data points. The most important one is the amount of time nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also factored a few quality measures into our nursing grades. This place was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.