Life Care Center of Ocala

In addition to being an elite facility overall, this nursing home excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A+. Very few places performed as well in this area. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its top-shelf profile, this nursing home also was given a strong long-term care grade, with a score of A. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 99.32886 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning our third area, this facility was awarded a strong short-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in that category. In crafting these short-term care ratings, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The last area we analyzed is nursing, where this nursing home was awarded an A-. This wrapped up a very impressive report card. Only a select few nursing homes earned an A- or higher in in each area we assessed. Our nursing rating assesses the facility's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.