Kr at Hillsborough Lakes

With an address in Lutz, Florida, Kr at Hillsborough Lakes is one of a mere two available facilities in this city. Featuring an overall score of A, this nursing home is among the top nursing homes we looked at. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top fifth of all facilities in the United States. Keep reading to see this nursing home's category grades, which are also strong. It would be hard to find any major flaws in this nursing home's profile.

On top of receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an A+ inspection grade. This grade is based on its recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the best complements we can pay to a facility. Arguably the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This place was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to resident safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

An additional reason we graded this facility so favorably is that it received an A+ short-term care grade. This is just about as strong as it gets in this area. In determining these short-term care grades, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. This facility provides more services with physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. This is certainly a great sign. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from this nursing home. On top of excelling in the area of physical therapy staffing, we found that it fared as well as just about any facility in the nation in this area with 68.2 percent of its patients returning home. Most facilities are below 50 percent in this metric.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing score analyzes the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of those nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This place boasts a really impressive 5.2 hours of nursing care per patient each day, of which a significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses. This is one of the most highly trained levels of nurses. On top of looking at levels of nursing care, we also looked at a few quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these datapoints as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

In the last category, this facility also was given an impressive long-term care grade, with a B+. This completed an elite report card. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of providing very impressive levels of nurse staffing, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, we looked at the facility's number of hospitalizations. We found that this nursing home had 4.19 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. While this admittedly wasn't as favorable as some of its other scores in this area, this statistic may be skewed for some facilities due to some of the medical complexity of residents.