Lakeland Nursing & Rehabilitation

Although we didn't rate this facility well overall, we want to point out its decent grade of B- in the category of nursing. The nursing rating considers a host of factors. The most heavily weighted one is the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. While this place got docked a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared remarkably well in this statistic. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning patients more often.

We also gave this nursing home a decent grade in the area of short-term care, where it received a grade of C. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. We were surprised to find that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. In fact, it offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. It is important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The last measure we considered in this area is the number of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below average.

This facilities third most favorable area was long-term care. We gave it a grade of C in this category. This is essentially a middle of the pack score in this area. Our long-term care scores are more critical for residents in need of more traditional services related to activities of daily living. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 99.36575 percent of its patients, which is better than the majority of nursing homes. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Moving on the last category of inspections, this ended up being this facility's weakest link. Inspection ratings are based on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. We gave this nursing home a score of D in this category, which is a very weak grade. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. This particular nursing home was assessed 3 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we can say is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they created a risk to resident health or safety. Finally, we need to point out that this facility received large government fines in recent years of over $50,000. This usually means that government inspectors became fed up after several years of failed health inspections.