Consulate Health Care at West Altamonte

To go along with its decent overall score, we awarded this facility an A for our inspections rating. This is far more impressive than its overall grade. Inspection grades weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this category generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't 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 received a strong grade in our nursing category. We awarded this nursing home an above average grade of B in this area. When computing a facility's nursing score, we consider the number of hours nurses are caring for patients and the level of skill of those nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a resident more often.

In addition, we also would like to point out that this facility was awarded favorable long-term care marks this year. We awarded them one of our more impressive scores in this area, with a grade of B. Facilities that receive this type of grade in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are well cared for. After we finished assessing the amount of nursing care, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 97.13376 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening health condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Moving on to the final category, this nursing home received a decent short-term care score of C. Short-term care grades are often used to assess a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to offer highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide better levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 3.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.