Lee Memorial Hospital Skilled Nursing Unit

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A+. Very few places fared this well in this category. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also gave this facility a score of A+ for its short-term care grade. In computing our short-term care grades, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This category is generally a reliable assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Turning our third area, we awarded this facility a grade of A for our long-term care rating. This is a first-rate score. If you are seeking anything other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care ratings. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We weren't able to find this facility's vaccination rates. 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 number.

In the final category, we awarded this facility a grade of A+ for our nursing score. This topped off a very favorable report card. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we assess the amount of time nurses are caring for patients and the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these data points as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.