Gulf Coast Medical Center Skilled Nursing Unit

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. We weren't able to find information about this nursing home's deficiencies. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

An additional reason we rated this facility so highly is that it was awarded an A+ short-term care grade. This is just about as strong as it gets in this area. In crafting our short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to create a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Compounding its fine assessment, this nursing home also received a dominant long-term care grade, with a score of A. For patients in need of a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find information on vaccination rates. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In our final category, this facility also received an impressive nursing rating, with a grade of A. This wrapped up a first-rate profile. Our nursing category is based on several factors, many of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.