Sunny Hill Nursing Home of Will County

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 98.68421 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. This turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this nursing home an A+. We weighed the qualifications of nurses at the facility, as well as the number of hours those nurses spent with patients, in calculating our grade in this category. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state 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 having a protocol of moving residents more often.

This nursing home also earned excellent government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our best scores in that category, with an A. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The next area we rated was short-term care, where this nursing home received a grade of B-. While this ended up being its lowest category score, this is still not a terrible score. Our short-term care ratings are likely most important for folks in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 2.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.