The Lakes

One of the reasons this ended up being a strong nursing home is that it received a very impressive inspection score. Inspections is its best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility an A. Inspection ratings are based on items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This facility really excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Nursing grades are primarily tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving residents even once per day.

This facility received a favorable long-term care score as well. We gave it one of our higher grades in that area with a score of B. Facilities that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final category we rated was short-term care, in which this facility was awarded a B. This nursing home didn't prove to have any weaknesses. With our short-term care score, we strive to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze the facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. It does not look like this nursing home provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.