Jupiter Medical Center Pavilion

We also found that this facility excelled in our short-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. In computing these short-term care scores, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to create a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Remarkably, this nursing home provides about 50% more services from physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. This is a very favorable sign. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that were able to return home from the facility. We found that it fared as well as just about any facility in Florida in this area with 65.3 percent of its patients returning home. With most facilities, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

This exemplary facility also was superb in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A+. Very few nursing homes fared better in this area. Facilities that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are kept in good health. This nursing home is off the charts in this category.

Continuing with its first-class performance, this facility also earned an A+ inspection rating. This grade is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last category we looked at, this nursing home received a very strong grade of A in our nursing category. With this grade, the facility topped off a straight A report card. Our nursing score looks at the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provided 9 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, which is among the higher totals in the country. A significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the more skilled levels of nurses. We are really impressed by these figures. In addition to offering impressive levels of nursing care, this place also excelled in the quality measures we assessed. It performed as well as any nursing home in the nation in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.