Westminster Place

To go along with its strong overall score, we gave this nursing home a grade of A+ for its short-term care rating. Our short-term care scores are based on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. This nursing home is substantially above the national average in terms of its quantity of both physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents. In fact, it provided about 50% more care per resident from both of these care providers than the average facility provided. These are generally good indicators of quality short-term care. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it fared as well as just about any facility in Illinois in this area with 68.5 percent of its residents returning home. With most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

We also gave this nursing home a score of A+ for its long-term care grade. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Although we determined this facility had an impressive amount of nursing care provided by aids and other nursing staff, we found its vaccination rate to be somewhat below average. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to just 85.470085 percent of its residents. This is a figure we would really like to see this nursing home improve on. The last statistic we assessed was its hospitalization rate. Here we found that this facility had 2.39 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

Amazingly, we also awarded this nursing home yet another A+ in the area of inspections. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was assessed 10 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the final category, this facility also was awarded a first-rate nursing rating, with an A-. This completed a rare straight A report card. The nursing grade includes quite a few subcategories, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This particular facility provided 5.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This was one of the highest figures we found. Furthermore, we found that a significant percentage of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. In addition to providing high levels of nursing care, this nursing home also fared well in several of the quality-based metrics we assessed. For example, in terms of the percentage of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility outpaced the national average. This is generally an indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls. Pressure ulcers can generallY be prevented with better nursing care and a policy of regularly turning patients to prevent bed sores.