Hamlin Place of Boynton Beach

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a deadly health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of turning patients more frequently.

Another impressive feature of this nursing home is its inspection score. In that category, we gave this facility an A-. Inspection grades are tied to many pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last category we scored, this nursing home received a very favorable grade of A- in our short-term care category. With this grade, the nursing home wrapped up a straight A report card. In calculating these short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.