Boynton Beach Rehabilitation Center

To go along with its relatively modest overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A for its inspection grade. This is far better than the facility's overall rating. Our inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category generally have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had some 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 CMS did not deem 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.

This nursing home also was given a favorable short-term care score. Indeed, we gave it a grade of B in that area, which happens to be one of our more favorable scores. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we size up a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is frequently a useful assessment of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final item we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 4.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return 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-. Nursing ratings are based in large part on nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, our nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often an indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its residents.

Moving on to the next area, this nursing home was awarded a respectable long-term care grade of C. Long-term care grades are based on the nursing home's quantity of nursing services. This includes a vast range of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. Once we concluded our assessment of the volume of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. We were pleased to find that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. This place keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.