The Laurels of Huber Heights

While this facility's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we gave it an A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Inspection ratings account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You should avoid facilities with a list of deficiencies flagged. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

Included in this facility's litany of terrible grades was its F in the area of short-term care. In our short-term care category, we seek to forge a sound barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Not surprisingly, we learned that this nursing home offers substantially less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the typical facility. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents that returned home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The next category we analyzed was long-term care. This facility's was given an abysmal long-term care score where it received an F. For prospective patients seeking a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. After looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 96.9163 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is better than the average nursing home. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

The next category we assessed was nursing, in which this facility received a rock bottom score here also. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this area, which is definitely a major concern. We weighed the qualifications of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of time the nurses spent with patients, in computing our score in this area. With a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, this place's nurse staffing levels were significantly below average. This place also had terrible marks in some of the quality-based metrics to pair with its low nursing hours. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and we were disappointed. This place was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this statistic. This is a bad sign when you consider that so many bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. This statistic helped pull down this facility's nursing score quite a bit.