The Grove of Northbrook

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, this place really excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A+. Few facilities fared better in this area. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this category tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

Another one of this nursing home's above average category grades came in the category of long-term care. We gave them one of our better scores in that category, with a score of B. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 97.477066 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Nursing grades are primarily based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving a resident at least once a day.

The final area we assessed was short-term care. In this category, we awarded this facility a B-. In determining these short-term care grades, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to create a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.