Lake Regional Health Systems

We also found that this facility excelled in our short-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Short-term care ratings are based on the facility's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, in addition to other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 6.8 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Nursing ratings are mostly tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving residents more frequently.

Adding to an already impressive profile, this facility also received virtually flawless health inspections in recent years. As a result, we awarded it an A+ inspection grade. Our inspection scores weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category typically have few of these severe deficiencies. This place was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Moving on to our last category, this facility received a strong long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. For residents looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility submitted data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.