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 7.1 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.

Contributing to its first-rate assessment, this facility also was given a superb long-term care grade, with a grade of A. In a long-term care setting, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. One of the criteria we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. It does not look like this nursing home provided information on its vaccination levels. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our inspection category, this facility excelled in that area, which is based on the nursing home's recent government inspections. In fact, we gave it an A for that category. This wrapped up its straight A report card. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.