Ginger Cove

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled in nursing, where it received a grade of A. The nursing rating consists of several components, however, the primary consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided 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 place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Adding to its impressive category scores, this nursing home also excelled in the category of inspections, where it earned a grade of A. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its first-rate resume, this facility also was awarded a superb short-term care score, with a grade of A. In computing our short-term care grades, we assess a facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is considered to be a meaningful measure of the facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The last area we assessed is long-term care, where this nursing home received a grade of A-. This finished off a very favorable profile. Not many facilities received an A- or higher in every category. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.