Life Care Center of Aurora

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this facility an A+ for its short-term care rating. In the area of short-term care, we try to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. Nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an A-. Our nursing rating is largely tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Colorado in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning patients at least once a day.

Turning to another of this nursing home's strengths, it also earned a very impressive inspection rating. Inspections turned out to be one of its best category grades. In that area, we gave this nursing home an impressive grade of B+. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Turning to our final category, we gave this nursing home a D for the area of long-term care. This is the nursing home's weakest category grade. Nevertheless, we wouldn't over-emphasize one bad area. Long-term care scores in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids. On top of considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated only 85.661766 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.