Senior Care at Lake Pointe

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. In fact, its inspection score was far better than its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave this facility an A. Inspection ratings are tied to many pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This means that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to resident safety or health. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily something to panic about.

In addition, we awarded this facility a B in our long-term care category. This is one of our higher scores. Facilities that receive this type of grade in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are kept in good health. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a deadly health condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home's next most favorable area is short-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a B-. In the category of short-term care, we try to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. We weren't able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually well below average.

Moving on to the fourth area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D for our nursing category. This was the facility's weakest category rating. Naturally, this category hurt the nursing home's overall profile a bit. In determining a facility's nursing rating, we look at the amount of time nurses spend with patients and the levels of training of the nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing ratings. This facility performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.