Oak Brook Care

In addition to being a first-rate nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in the category of short-term care, where it received an elite grade of A+. Few facilities fared better in this area. In our short-term care category, we endeavor to forge a sound barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at the facility's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

In addition, this nursing home also earned excellent health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better grades in that category, with a grade of A-. Arguably the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we consider the number of hours nurses are with residents and the levels of training of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to our last category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D in the area of long-term care. This was the nursing home's worst category rating. However, we wouldn't dwell on one bad category. If you are looking for anything other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care grades. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 96 percent of its residents, which is higher than most nursing homes. To our surprise, this place also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.