Grace Healthcare of Lake Wales

While we did not have many positive things to say about this facility's overall score, it earned a respectable inspection report this year. It received a decent grade in that area with a B-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. This turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility an B-. Our nursing rating weighs several datapoints, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This place provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it scored well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

This facility received its third most favorable category score in the category of long-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of B- in this category, which is a decent grade. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. We were pleased to find that this facility vaccinates 96.74797 percent of its patients for pneumonia. This place keeps its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The last area we looked at was short-term care, in which this facility was given a very poor grade here as well. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this area, which is definitely somewhat alarming. Our short-term care scores are thought to be most important for people needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Considering its weak rating in this category, we weren't stunned to learn that this nursing home provided substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other facilities. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who returned home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.