Parkside Lutheran Home

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection grades are tied to many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

An additional reason we graded this facility so favorably is that it was given an A+ long-term care score. This is just about as elite as it gets in this area. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Nursing ratings are tied to nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Switching gears to the final area, this facility was awarded a highly favorable short-term care grade. We gave it a grade of B+ in that area, rounding out one of our more favorable report cards. Our short-term care grades are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final measure we considered in this category is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.