The Laurels of Walden Park

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a grade of C for our nursing rating. Our nursing rating analyzes the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This facility provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat discouraging figure as it is well below average. Finally, our nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this facility actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

As it turns out, its inspection reports were not the source of this nursing home's abysmal overall grade. It earned a grade of C in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. This nursing home was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were in categories G through L. This means that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

The next area we analyzed was short-term care. This facility's received a rock-bottom short-term care grade where it received a lowly F. In the category of short-term care, we attempt to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Given its score in this area, we weren't stunned to discover that this facility was well below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its patients based on the measures we looked at. The last item we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics was damning for this facility's short-term care grade.

The final category we looked at is long-term care. This nursing home was given an abysmal grade of F in this area. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. We were concerned by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated only 45.429363 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.