Laurel Lakes Rehabilitation and Wellness Center

Even though we graded this nursing home incredibly poorly overall, it earned a more respectable long-term care grade this year. We gave it a grade of C in that category. Our long-term care scores are critical for prospective residents seeking non-healthcare services such as personal care. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 99.631 percent of its patients, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. This nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home did not receive favorable inspection reports in recent years. In fact, it received a grade of just D for its inspection score, which was unfortunately its second best grade. Inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. This particular facility was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we can say is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they posed a risk to patient safety or health. Finally, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that this facility was assessed significant government fines amounting to more than $100,000. This typically suggests that a bad performance spanned more than one year.

We were stunned to find that this nursing home also excelled in the category of nursing. We gave it an D for that category, which is one of our best scores. The nursing rating includes many components, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This facility offered only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is not a very impressive figure. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This nursing home fared well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these metrics to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care.

The last category we analyzed was short-term care. This facility was given a very poor grade of F in that category. Our short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. With a grade this poor in this category, we were not shocked to learn that this nursing home was well below average in multiple staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it offered far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most facilities. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This wasn't a strength for this facility. We found that just 3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.