Villa at Palos Heights

While we did not rate this nursing home well overall, we wanted to note its decent government inspection reports in recent years. We gave it a somewhat respectable score of B- in that area. We believe that one of the most critical factors in evaluating an inspection report is deficiencies. In this regard, we especially focus on the severity of the deficiencies. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.

We also ended up giving this facility a fairly respectable grade in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B-. Our nursing grade is largely tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This figure is significantly below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly excelled in some of the quality measures we assessed. In fact, it performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

This facilities next most favorable area was short-term care. We awarded it a grade of B- in this area. This is essentially a middle of the road score in this category. Short-term care grades are important for individuals needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a vast spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below the national average.

Moving on to our fourth area, this facility was awarded a grade of B- for long-term care, which is generally a respectable score. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. One of the criteria we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Fortunately, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 99.612404 percent of its residents. This place also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.