The Laurels of Bedford

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in that category with a score of B-. Inspection grades are tied to many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important thing to look for on these reports. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to patient safety. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this nursing home an C. There are a number of subcategories within this category. Many of the criteria relate to staffing levels. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, nursing ratings also factor in quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

Unfortunately, this nursing home's next best score is short-term care. As it turns out, with a grade of D in this area, it still performed somewhat poorly. Our short-term care scores are meaningful for prospective residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. This means a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this facility provides significantly less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final datapoint we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics doomed this nursing home's short-term care grade.

Switching gears to the final area, this facility didn't perform very well in this category either. Due to a poor grade of F in long-term care, this is about as terrible as it gets. For patients in need of a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. We were optimistic to find that this facility vaccinated 96.507935 percent of its patients for pneumonia. To our surprise, this nursing home also keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.