Fort Myers Rehabilitation and Nursing Center

This nursing home received a strong overall grade as discussed above, but we especially wanted to emphasize its excellent nursing rating. We awarded them an A- in this category. The nursing grade includes several datapoints. The most important variable is the amount of time nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.5 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 often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it was given a very positive long-term care grade. Indeed, this wound up being its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility a B+. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of B+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. This place was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

The final category we assessed was short-term care. We awarded this nursing home one of our more favorable scores in that area, with a grade of B. This nursing home proved to be strong across the board. Short-term care scores are critical for patients needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of skilled nursing services. This means a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. It doesn't look like this facility submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The last statistic we considered in this area is the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 4.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.