ProMedica Skilled Nursing And Rehabilitation (Palos Heights West)

This facility received an elite short-term care grade. In fact, we gave this facility an A- in this area, which really helped its overall score. Our short-term care scores are believed to be most important for folks requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing. This includes not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of B+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively insignificant. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily something to panic about.

We also awarded this facility a favorable grade in nursing. This facility earned a grade of B in this category, which is one of our better grades. We scrutinized the qualifications of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses worked with patients, in determining our grade in this area. This facility provided 0.3 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 avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we analyzed is long-term care, which proved to be this facility's least impressive area. Sadly, it received an F for this category, which is clearly a major disappointment. Nursing homes that do not fare well in this category typically are not as well-staffed and are lagging in a few of the areas of routine medical care we assessed. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 91.36364 percent of its residents. This is a bit below what we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable figure. To our surprise, this place actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.