Norridge Gardens

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a grade of B- for our nursing rating. The nursing score assesses quite a few datapoints, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This place provides 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, our nursing scores also factor in quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

We were also stunned to find that this facility earned a decent short-term care grade in our assessment. We gave it a C in that category. In determining our short-term care grades, we assess the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is typically a solid measure of a facility's rehabilitation services. We found that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. It offered fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 4.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well below average.

This nursing home did not receive favorable inspection reports in recent years. In fact, it only received a grade of D for its inspection grade. Inspection grades weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. You should be more cautious when considering a facility that has severe deficiencies on a recent inspection report. This particular facility had one category G through L deficiency, which rank among the more serious categories of deficiencies. These categories indicate that the deficiencies identified by CMS had the potential to create actual harm to residents. Finally, this facility also received 32 substantiated complaints in recent years. This is yet another bad sign.

The final category we scored was long-term care, where this facility was given an abysmal grade in this area as well. It received an abysmal F for this category, which is obviously a major concern. Nursing homes that don't score well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in a few of the areas of routine medical care we looked at. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility vaccinated 47.25537 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is several points below the national average. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.