Hialeah Shores Nursing and Rehab Center

To go along with its strong overall score, we awarded this facility an A+ for our inspection category. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This place received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This first-rate facility also excelled in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Moving on our next area, this facility was awarded a top-shelf short-term care grade. In fact, it received a grade of A in that category. Our short-term care grade is generally employed to judge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation In order to have high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. 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, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The fourth category we graded was nursing, where this nursing home was given an A-. This completed a very favorable profile. Only a select few facilities received an A- or higher in in each area we assessed. Our nursing rating considers a host of subcategories. The most important factor is the quantity of hours nurses spend with residents. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This place fared well in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the percentage of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this nursing home performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented with better nursing care.