The Elmhurst Healthcare

In addition to being a first-rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in our short-term care category, where it received an A+. Our short-term care ratings are probably most meaningful for people needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally requires more skilled nursing. This includes not merely nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

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. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time those nurses spent with residents, in determining our rating in this area. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to our inspection category, this nursing home excelled in that category, which is based on the nursing home's recent inspection reports. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. Arguably the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies an immediate risk to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

Switching gears to the last area, we awarded this nursing home a D for the area of long-term care. This is the facility's weakest category score. However, you shouldn't over-emphasize a single bad area. For residents looking for a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. It does not appear that this facility provided information on its vaccination levels. Surprisingly, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.