Life Care Center of Aurora

One of the many reasons this place received a great overall grade is that it earned an A+ in short-term care. Our short-term care scores are vital for patients needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a wide range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home performed well in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Nursing ratings are primarily associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving patients more often.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+ for our inspections rating. Inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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.

The final area we looked at was long-term care. This nursing home was given a very good long-term care rating this year, with a C. While this wasn't quite as impressive as some of its other grades, this is nevertheless a respectable grade for that category. Our long-term care grades are based in part on the facility's volume of nursing care. This includes a vast scope of personal care services, ranging from assistance with activities of daily living to routine medical services. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 93.181816 percent of its patients. This is somewhat less than we expected but still a respectable figure. Nevertheless, this place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.