The Laurels of Massillon

The Laurels of Massillon is in Massillon, Ohio. The city has 65,540 people. We gave this facility a B- overall, which is a solid grade. This is comparable with the city grade in Massillon, which is a B. This facility seems to have a few things going for it. The best part of this nursing home's profile was is its inspection rating. Inspection reports are discussed in the next section.

While this nursing home's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

In addition, we awarded this facility a B+ in our short-term care category. This happens to be one of our better grades. In the category of short-term care, we try to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. When we looked at this facility's physical therapist hours, we found it offered more hours of physical therapy per day to its residents than most nursing homes. The last datapoint we assessed in this category is the number of residents that returned home from the facility. We found that it fared as well as just about any facility in Ohio in this area with 58.8 percent of its patients returning home.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. There are a host of criteria within this grade. Most of these subcategories relate to the quantity of nurse staffing. According to CMS records, this facility averaged 3.9 hours of nursing care per resident daily. Keep in mind that when we calculate our nursing scores, we apply more weight to hours performed by nurses with a higher level of skill. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as minimizing major falls. This place performed admirably in this datapoint. Avoiding major falls is usually a reliable indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses to assist its patients.

Turning to our next area, we gave this nursing home a grade of D in the area of long-term care. This is the facility's least impressive category grade. Of course, this score hurt the facility's overall profile to some degree. For prospective residents seeking a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. Based on its grade in this category, we were surprised to find that this nursing home received good marks in both nursing hours and its vaccination records. In fact, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 94.630875 percent of its residents. This statistic is higher than many nursing homes. Surprisingly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.52 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.