Lifequest Nursing Center

On top of faring well overall, this facility received a nearly flawless inspection report. Therefore, it received one of our highest grades in that category with an A+. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to resident health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

An additional quality feature for this facility is that it was given a favorable short-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category score. In this category, we gave this facility a B. Our short-term care grades are presumably most important for folks needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually requires additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This nursing home was awarded an impressive long-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our higher grades in that area with a grade of B. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a deadly illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final category we assessed proved to be this nursing home's worst category. Nevertheless, even in its weakest link we still gave it an acceptable grade of B- for our nursing category. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses working for the facility, as well as the number of hours those nurses spent with patients, in calculating our score in this category. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a relatively low total compared with most other facilities. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place.