Life Care Center of Estero

On top of receiving an elite overall grade, this nursing home also earned an A+ inspection grade. This is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the best complements we can pay to a nursing home. Our inspection grades are based on many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't consider 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.

This top notch facility also was superb in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a score of A+. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. When facilities receive this type of score in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the average nursing home. This nursing home was also able to keep its residents out of the hospital. While it had 1.73 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, its risk adjusted score was better than most nursing homes since it had some more complex patients.

Moving on our third area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for its short-term care grade. This is a first-rate score. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides a greater volume of physical therapist hours to its residents than the average nursing home. The last item we assessed in this category is the number of patients that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that it fared as well as just about any nursing home in Florida in this area with 58 percent of its patients returning home. With most facilities, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

The last category we looked at was nursing, where this facility received an A-. This finished off a very favorable report card. Few nursing homes earned an A- or better in each of our categories. Our nursing rating focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. With 4 hours of nursing care per resident per day, this place was above the national average. Lastly, this facility also excelled in the quality measures we looked at. It performed as well as any nursing home Florida in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.