Arlington Heights

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ short-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to devise a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. The last measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our nursing grade. Nursing grades are largely tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Adding another impressive category grade, we awarded this facility an impressive grade of B+ for our inspections category. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

The next area we rated was long-term care. It received a lowly F in this area, which is an abysmal score. We wouldn't simply disregard a nursing home due to a single concerning grade though. Nursing homes that do not score well in this category often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in a few of the areas of routine personal care we assessed. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. Candidly, we were a bit worried that this facility vaccinated 90 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be quite a few points less than what we were hoping for. Surprisingly, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best feature in this category.