Homestead Hills

On top of earning a strong overall grade, this nursing home also received excellent government inspections recently. We gave it one of our highest scores in that category, with an A. Inspection scores are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Nursing ratings are largely based on the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.6 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also performed well in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a score of A. Few facilities fared better in this category. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 84.05797 percent of its residents, which is somewhat below what we were hoping for. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, at least this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In our last category, this nursing home also was given a first-rate short-term care score, with a grade of B+. This completed a first-rate report card. In forming these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this area is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 4.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.