Gulf Pointe Plaza

To go along with its favorable overall grade, we gave this facility an A+ for our inspection category. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to point out the fact that this facility received a superb score of A- in our short-term care area. Our short-term care scores are presumably most important for folks in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. This means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

This facility also received a high-end long-term care grade. This actually turned out to be this facility's third most impressive category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a score of A-. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a life or death health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it 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.

The last category we analyzed is nursing, in which this facility was awarded a B-. This was this nursing home's worst category. This is still not a major area of concern. Our nursing rating is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the number of hours of care provided.