Gulf Shore Care Center

Gulf Shore Care Center is a facility located in Pinellas Park, Florida, a city with 46,772 people. We gave this facility an overall grade of B. A score of this caliber requires solid marks in most areas. This grade was right in line with the city grade in Pinellas Park. This nursing home was better in some categories than others, but it didn't have any poor grades in any of our major categories. More information about these categories can be found below.

One of the reasons this turned out to be a strong nursing home is that it received a very impressive inspection grade. In fact, inspections is its best category grade. In this category, we gave it an A+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This facility also was awarded a strong long-term care score. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B+ in this category. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.42693 percent of its patients, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, we looked at the nursing home's number of hospitalizations. While it had 2.93 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted statistic was close to the national average due to it having more complicated patients.

Turning to our next category, this nursing home also earned a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is an above average score in this category. Our short-term care grade is often employed to assess a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation In order to offer high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other licensed professionals. Remarkably, this facility offers its patients at least 1.5 times as many physical therapist hours per week than the average facility. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it was respectable in this area with 45.3 percent of its patients returning home.

Moving on to our final category, this nursing home received a C in nursing, which is generally a respectable rating. We analyzed the skill-level of nurses employed by the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses spent with residents, in calculating our rating in this area. Based on the data, it looks like this place provides an impressive 4 hours per resident daily. This is more nursing care than most places provide. In determining our grades, we apply more weight to hours performed by more highly trained nurses such as registered or licensed nurses. Finally, this facility was relatively weak in some of the major areas we look at, with subpar scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.