Hollenbeck Palms

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ for nursing. In computing a nursing home's nursing grade, we assess the number of hours nurses are with residents and the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This facility really excelled in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a score of A-. Few facilities performed better in this area. In the category of short-term care, we strive to qualify indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility also earned impressive government inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a B. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite minor. This facility was assessed 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

The next category we rated was long-term care. In this area, we awarded this nursing home a decent grade of B-. This actually was this facility's least impressive category. In the category of long-term care, we analyze the amount of services provided by a facility, rather than more sophisticated services. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.