The Lakes at Litchfield

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our long-term care rating. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We were not able to find this place's vaccination data. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. Our nursing grade is primarily based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 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 often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Moving on to our inspection category, this facility excelled in that category, which is based on the nursing home's recent inspection reports. In fact, we awarded it an impressive grade of A for that category. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last category we rated, this facility was awarded an impressive grade grade of A- in our short-term care category. With this grade, the facility completed a straight A profile. Our short-term care grades are likely more important for those requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes more highly-skilled nursing services. This includes not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 4.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.