Pleasant View Luther Home

In addition to being a first rate nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in our short-term care category, where it received an A-. Few nursing homes fared better in this area. Short-term care ratings are vital for individuals seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a vast scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In that area, we gave this facility an A-. The nursing grade assesses several components, but the main consideration is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Illinois in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a resident even once per day.

This facility also earned a nearly flawless government inspection report. It received one of our highest grades in that category with an A-. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

The last area we analyzed was long-term care. This nursing home was given a favorable nursing rating this year, with a grade of B. Even though this isn't as dominant as many of its other category grades, this remains one of our more favorable scores in that category. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in long-term care it is typically a good sign for patient care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.