Life Care Center of Kirkland

This nursing home really excelled in our short-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our highest grades. This boosted its overall profile. With our short-term care category, we strive to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at the nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of B+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of C in this category. The nursing rating weighs many factors. The most heavily weighted factor is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day, which is not an impressive total. Finally, despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is generally a reliable indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.

The last category we analyzed was long-term care. This facility received a grade of C in the category. Our long-term care grade focuses on a facility's assistance with daily living instead of the skilled therapy and medical services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 97.63033 percent of its residents. Finally, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.