The Laurels of Hamilton

Although we didn't give this facility a good overall score, we actually gave it a strong grade in the area of inspections, where it earned a B+. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. You should avoid facilities with too many severe deficiencies flagged. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

We also gave this facility a middle of the road grade in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of C. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This score is frequently a fair assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. The critical question is whether this adversely impacted quality of care. The final datapoint we assessed in this area is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

We were surprised to find that this facility also excelled in the area of nursing. In fact, we awarded it an D for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our nursing rating weighs a variety of subcategories. The most important one is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is an alarmingly low total. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing ratings. This place fared well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.

The final area we analyzed was long-term care, which was this nursing home's worst category. We gave this facility a grade of D in that category. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is a bad sign for patient care and it may indicate that the place is not as well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to just 53.036434 percent of its patients, which is a bit of a concern. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.