Terrace of Delray Beach

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our short-term care rating. In computing our short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to create a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 7.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

On the list of its many dominant scores, this nursing home was awarded a strong long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a score of A in this area. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. One of the factors we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccines. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a great way to avoid unnecessary deaths for the aged 65 and up population. 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 only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. The nursing score is based on a number of subcategories. The most important variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

For the last category we looked at, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a B+. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies 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.