Brighton Gardens of Tampa

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our short-term care category. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to assess measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Adding to its first-rate profile, this nursing home also was awarded a superb long-term care grade, with a grade of A. Facilities that excel in this category typically provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Adding yet another impressive category grade, we awarded this nursing home an impressive grade of B+ for our inspections rating. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite insignificant. This nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last category we analyzed, this facility was given a very favorable grade of B+ in our nursing category. With this score, the nursing home completed an elite profile. The nursing score includes many factors. The most important factor is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. 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 facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.