Life Care Center of Altamonte Springs

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is it received an impressive grade in inspections. Inspections turned out to be its best category. In this category, we awarded this facility an A. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this area tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Compounding its impressive achievements in other areas, we gave this nursing home a grade of A- for its long-term care score. For prospective patients seeking a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 80 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be slightly less than we were hoping for but still a respectable figure. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. The nursing grade includes a handful of factors, most of which are associated with nursing hours. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility Florida in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving a resident more frequently.

The next area we rated was short-term care. In that area, we gave this facility an impressive grade of B. Our short-term care grades are presumably most critical for folks in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this category is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 4.9 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.