Beachside Nursing Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we gave this facility an A for our short-term care grade. Our short-term care grades are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. We weren't able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we gave it an A for that area, which is one of our highest scores. This is one of the few facilities with an overall score in this range which received multiple category grades this high. Inspection scores weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

The third category we analyzed is long-term care. This nursing home received a very positive long-term care grade, with a grade of B in this area. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.4127 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly can be a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The final area we rated is nursing, where this nursing home was awarded a B. This nursing home proved to be relatively strong across the board. Our nursing score includes a number of subcategories. The most important one is the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.