Parkside Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

To pair with its relatively modest overall score, we awarded this facility an A- for our inspections rating. This score is far more impressive than the facility's overall score. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home received 9 deficiencies on its inspection report. Overall, this is still a solid inspection report, but we'd always recommend looking into any deficiencies you find troubling.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an B-. The nursing score weighs many datapoints. The most heavily weighted variable is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This facility provides 0.7 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a lower figure than we were hoping for. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. While this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did very well in this statistic. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving a resident at least once a day.

The third category we assessed was short-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a B- in this area. In crafting our short-term care scores, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its level of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. The critical question is whether this also impacted quality of care. The last measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below average.

The final area we graded is long-term care, which ended up being a weak link for this facility. We gave this nursing home a D for the area of long-term care. For long-term care residents, 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. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.85057 percent of its residents, which is better than most nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place also keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.