Lakebridge, a Waters Community

To go along with its relatively modest overall score, we gave this facility a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. This score is far better than the facility's overall rating. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

In addition, we gave this facility a B in our long-term care category. This happens to be one of our more favorable scores. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 99.41691 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. In computing our nursing grades, we weigh both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis, which is well below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. In fact, it scored well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care offered.

The next area we looked at was short-term care. It received a lowly F in this category, which is a rock bottom score. This is obviously a significant disappointment. Our short-term care grade is typically employed to judge a facility's rehabilitation services. In order to have highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to offer better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.