The Grove of Fox Valley

While this nursing home received a decent overall score, its inspections score is notably more impressive than its overall score. Due to a strong inspection report this year, it earned a strong score in that category with a B+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite minor. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facility earned high scores in our nursing category as well. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of B-. Our nursing grade looks at the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a relatively low total compared with most other nursing homes. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place.

The next best category we gave this facility in any area came in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of C. Long-term care ratings are based in part on a facility's volume of care. This includes a vast scope of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We found that this facility administered the vaccine to only 83.83372 percent of its patients, which is quite a bit lower than we expected. Fortunately, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The final category we graded was short-term care, which turned out to be a weak link for this nursing home. We gave this facility a grade of just D for the area of short-term care. Our short-term care ratings are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Considering its weak rating in this category, we weren't surprised to discover this nursing home provided far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 3.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.