Laporte City Specialty Care

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it earned an A+ in our inspections category. This is as good as it gets in this area. Inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category generally have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report 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.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility an A-. When computing our nursing scores, we analyze both staffing levels and the training levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving a patient even once per day.

Turning to the next area, this nursing home also received a grade of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is an above average score in this area. If you are looking for services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care scores. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 83.22981 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final area we rated is short-term care. We gave this nursing home one of our higher scores in this category, with a grade of B. Although this wasn't as strong as a few of its other scores, it is nevertheless a fine grade. Our short-term care grade is commonly used to measure a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to provide highly scored rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home.