Laurel Park Behavioral Health Center

While we weren't high on this facility's overall grade, it actually earned an impressive long-term care grade this year. We gave it a grade of B in this area. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective 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. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 88.23529 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is slightly lower than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, at least this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We actually gave this facility a very solid score in the area of inspections as well. We awarded it a B- in this category. This is better than many nursing homes in this category. We believe that one of the most critical factors in evaluating an inspection report is deficiencies. We especially look at the severity of those deficiencies. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of C. There are several criteria included in this category. Most of these subcategories relate to levels of nurse staffing. This facility provides only 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure which is well below average. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. Although this facility got dinged a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality measures. With less than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this subcategory. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning patients more often.

The final category we rated is short-term care, which proved to be this facility's least impressive category. We gave this facility a grade of D in that category. Our short-term care grade is generally employed to measure a facility's rehabilitation services. To have good rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. With a score in this range for this area, we were not stunned to learn this nursing home was well below average in many staffing areas we assess. The nursing home provided significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most facilities. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents that were able to return home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home.