Life Care Center of Winter Haven

In addition to being a strong facility overall, this place also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A. Few facilities performed better in this category. Inspection scores are tied to several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Nursing grades are largely based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a resident more frequently.

Turning to the next area, this nursing home also received a grade of B+ for its short-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this category. In crafting our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to create a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The final area we looked at was long-term care. We gave this facility one of our higher scores in this area, with a grade of B. This nursing home turned out to be very solid in each area we assessed. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 99.30716 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.