O'neill Healthcare Lakewood

On top of receiving a great overall score, this nursing home also earned first-rate health inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our higher scores in this category, with an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively minor. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor deficiencies are not something to panic about.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it was given a very positive short-term care score. In fact, this proved to be its second best category score. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+. Our short-term care grades are important for patients requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Our nursing score considers a variety of factors. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provided 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we looked at is this facility's poorest category. However, even in its weakest link we still gave it an acceptable grade of C for our long-term care category. Our long-term care ratings are more important for patients in need of more traditional assistance associated with personal care. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 91.96142 percent of its residents. Nevertheless, this place keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.