Joliet Terrace Nursing Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

This facility really excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing score is largely based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving a patient more often.

Turning to another strength for this nursing home, we awarded them one of our stronger scores in our short-term care category as well, with a B+. Our short-term care scores are probably most important for those needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing. This means not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. We weren't able to track down registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. Lastly, we looked at 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 patients returned home.

The last area we analyzed was long-term care. This facility was given an above average long-term care grade this year, with a grade of B. This facility truly does not have any weak grades. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care scores. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 92.70517 percent of its patients, which is slightly less than we expected. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.