Conway Lakes Health & Rehabilitation Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.04 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility also received an A+ inspection score, making it one of the rare places to receive multiple A+'s in our category grades. This grade is based on the place's inspection reports. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can pay to a nursing home. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. It doesn't look like we were able to find deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. The nursing score assesses many datapoints, however, the paramount consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a patient more frequently.

Switching gears to our fourth area, this facility was given an extremely favorable short-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it an A- in that category, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. Our short-term care grades are important for residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a broad spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.