Fort Pierce Health Care

On top of a strong overall grade, this nursing home also earned favorable short-term care grades this year. We awarded it one of our higher scores in that area, with a B+. In forming our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility'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 scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

In addition, this facility earned excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with an B+. Our inspection scores are based on many items found on the a nursing home's inspections. Facilities that excel in this category have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider 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.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. Our nursing rating is mostly associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning residents more frequently.

The final area we assessed is long-term care. We gave this facility a grade of B- in that category. For long-term care residents, the primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 99.71429 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than most nursing homes. This nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.