Life Care Center of Seneca

On top of receiving a great overall rating, this facility also earned an A+ inspection rating. This is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can offer a facility. Our inspection grades are tied to pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this category have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. 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.

This nursing home received high marks in the category of long-term care as well. In fact, we gave it one of our most favorable scores in that area with a score of A-. Facilities that receive this type of grade in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. In determining a facility's nursing grade, we weigh the amount of time nurses are seeing patients as well as the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning patients more often.

This nursing home's least impressive category is short-term care, which is the final category we analyzed. For this category, we gave this nursing home a D. We wanted to draw your attention to this possible weak spot, however, you shouldn't focus exclusively on one category either. With our short-term care rating, we try to create a meaningful measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at the nursing home's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. We found that this place was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the staffing figures we assessed. The last measure we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics doomed this nursing home's short-term care grade.