Consulate Health Care of New Port Richey

In addition to receiving a strong overall grade, this facility also earned first-rate health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better scores in that category, with an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Contributing to its profile, this facility also received a score of B for its long-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this area. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 99.70149 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home received its third best category grade in the area of short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a grade of B- in this category, which is a decent score. In computing our short-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to formulate a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 5.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

The final category we rated is nursing. This nursing home was awarded a B- in this area. Nursing grades are based in large part on nurse staffing levels. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it scored well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.