Laurie Care Center

Laurie Care Center is an average-sized non-profit facility located in Laurie, Missouri. We awarded this facility an overall grade of B. A grade in this range requires solid marks in most areas. This facility definitely has plenty of good features. This place's impressive report card was highlighted by its inspection reports, which we will address in the next section.

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Inspection grades are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another strong feature for this nursing home is that it was awarded a very positive short-term care grade. Indeed, this proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a B+. With our short-term care rating, we endeavor to create a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at a nursing home's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides a greater volume of physical therapist hours to its residents than the average nursing home. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of facilities in the nation with 57.7 percent of its residents returning home. This is a significantly higher rate than most facilities.

The next category we assessed was long-term care. This nursing home was awarded a favorable long-term care grade, with a B+ in this category. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 98.13664 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. 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 one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The final category we graded was nursing, was this nursing home's least impressive category. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in that category. This was one of the few weak links on a quality profile. The nursing grade features several subcategories. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is below the national average. Unfortunately, this facility also didn't fare as well as we hoped in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at for this category.