Symphony Palos Park

This facility received a short-term care score which is better than its overall score. We gave this nursing home a B in this area. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is more often than not a reliable measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

This facility's inspection grade also was better than its overall score. Due to a quality inspection report this year, it received one of our better grades in that category with a B. Our inspection scores weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. While this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. A few minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. In calculating a facility's nursing score, we consider the quantity of hours nurses commit to patients and the levels of training of the nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a relatively low total compared with most other nursing homes. Lastly, despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally an indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place.

This facility's weakest category was long-term care, which is the last category we looked at. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this category. In spite of a few acceptable scores in other categories, this score is nevertheless alarming so we wanted to make a note of it. Nursing homes that don't fare well in this category often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in a few of the areas of routine healthcare services we looked at. After looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. We were concerned by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated just 73.962265 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.