Life Care Center of Morehead

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to be an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among this facility's other strengths is its first-rate long-term care grade. We gave them one of our strongest grades in that category, with a grade of A. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. One of the statistics we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize negative health outcomes for the aged 65 and up population. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. This wasn't quite on par with some of its other category grades mentioned above. Our nursing grade features many subcategories. The most heavily weighted variable is the quantity of hours nurses spend with residents. This facility averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis, which is well below average. Lastly, despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place.

The last area we scored was short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility an acceptable grade of B-. This is this nursing home's weakest category. In the category of short-term care, we seek to qualify indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.2 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.