Laurel Health & Rehabilitation Center

This facility excelled in the category of short-term care, with an A- in this category. This really propped up its overall grade. Our short-term care scores are considered to be most critical for patients requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 5.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This facility's second best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. Nursing ratings are mostly tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is far below average. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place.

Looking to our inspection category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. Our inspection grades are based on the facility's health inspection reports. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. This facility was assessed 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to find that none were category J through L deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to place patient health or safety in imminent harm or jeopardy. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

Turning to the next area, this nursing home didn't fare very well. With a rock bottom grade of F in long-term care, this was its worst area. Facilities that receive this type of score in long-term care likely don't provide the type of consistent 24/7 care that some other facilities offer. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 93.548386 percent of its patients. This is a bit less than we anticipated but still a decent figure. Surprisingly, this place actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This is its best feature in this category.