Consulate Health Care of Vero Beach

This facility earned an inspection score which is stronger than its overall rating. Inspection grades are tied to a nursing home's recent health inspections. We awarded this facility a very solid grade of B+ in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. While this facility had some deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

We also awarded this facility a favorable grade in nursing. This facility earned a grade of B+ in this category, which is one of our better grades. Our nursing score is primarily based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving residents more often.

This facility also received an impressive grade in our short-term care category. We gave this nursing home a better than average grade of B in this category. Short-term care scores are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a broad spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Moving on to our last area, this nursing home was given a C in long-term care, which we consider to be a respectable grade. Our long-term care grades are more meaningful for individuals in need of more conventional assistance associated with activities of daily living. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Thankfully, this facility gave the vaccine to 99.75845 percent of its residents, which is an above average percentage. This facility also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.