Lorien Bulle Rock

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this facility also excelled in our long-term care category, where it received an A+. Few facilities fared better in this area. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 99.375 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also wanted to note the fact that this nursing home performed remarkably in our short-term care rating. We gave them a dominant score of A+ in this category. Our short-term care grade is often used to score a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to have quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally must provide better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Racking up another strong category grade, this nursing home also excelled in inspections, where it received an A. Inspection grades account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This means that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to create an imminent risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Switching gears to our fourth category, this nursing home was awarded an extremely favorable nursing rating. We gave it a grade of A- in this area, giving this facility straight A's. The nursing grade is based on a host of subcategories. The most important variable is the amount of time nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This place fared well in some of the quality measures we looked at. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this nursing home performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented with better nursing care.