ProMedica Skilled Nursing And Rehabilitation (Palos Heights East)

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in that category with a score of B-. These inspection grades 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 received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report. We are also concerned by the fact that this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In that area, we gave this facility an B-. In determining our nursing ratings, we assess both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in some of these quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it did well in this metric. This is generally an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning patients at least once a day.

We were also stunned to find that this nursing home received a reasonably solid short-term care score in our assessment. We gave it a grade of B- in this category. With our short-term care score, we seek to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the nursing home's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the average facility. The hope is that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The last category we scored is long-term care. It received an abysmal F in this category, which is a bottom of the barrel grade. For patients in need of a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. We were pleased to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 94.27481 percent of its residents against pneumonia. To our surprise, this facility also keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.