Northwood Hills Care Center

The main reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection grade. Its inspection score was far superior to its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave this facility an A. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

This nursing home also was given a favorable score in our long-term care category. We gave this nursing home a better than average grade of B in that area. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 91.25 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is a bit below what we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Our third area we assessed was short-term care, in which this facility was given an F. Our short-term care scores are important for people requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of skilled nursing services. This means a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was well below average.

The final category we analyzed is nursing, which turned out to be this facility's weakest category. We gave it an F in this area, which is certainly a major concern. Our nursing rating looks at the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of training of those nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This particular nursing home offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This figure is well below average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing ratings. This facility fared well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.