Avante at Boca Raton

This nursing home earned a strong overall grade as discussed above, but we especially wanted to emphasize its excellent nursing score. We gave them a grade of A in this category. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home Florida in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of moving a patient even once per day.

We also want to emphasize this facility's nearly flawless inspections in recent years. We awarded them an B+ in this category. These inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to resident health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, we awarded them one of our more favorable grades in our short-term care category as well, with a grade of B+. Our short-term care scores are probably more critical for residents in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of skilled nursing. This includes not only nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 3.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

The next area we assessed is long-term care, in which we gave it a strong grade of B. This nursing home really didn't have any weak links. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.