The Springs at Monarch Landing

On top of earning a great overall grade, this facility received an A+ in our short-term care category. In crafting our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to create a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 6.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Nursing scores are mostly tied to the nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 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 Illinois in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a system of turning a patient more often.

Tallying yet another strong category grade, this nursing home also excelled in inspections, where it earned an A. Few facilities performed better in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

In our last area, this nursing home also was given a very strong long-term care rating, with a grade of A-. This wrapped up an elite report card. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't take any chances. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.