Arcadia Medical Resort of Parkside

Although we graded this place incredibly poorly overall, it actually earned a very impressive inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our better scores in that area with a B+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

Surprisingly, we awarded this nursing home a grade of C for our long-term care grade, which really isn't a bad grade. In determining our long-term care scores, we look at the assistance with daily living received by the nursing home's patients. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Tragically, we gave this facility an F for its short-term care score. Our short-term care scores are presumably most meaningful for folks needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Based on its grade in this category, we were not stunned to find that this facility was well below average in terms of the number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the measures we looked at. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The final category we graded is nursing, where this nursing home was given an abysmal score here as well. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F for this area, which is definitely a major disappointment. In determining a facility's nursing score, we assess the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This particular facility provided a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is well below the national average. To pair with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this place also didn't perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This place had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility. This may be a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these metrics pulled down this nursing home's nursing rating quite a bit.