Life Care Center of Palm Bay

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility received high marks in the area of short-term care as well. As a result, it received our highest grade in that category with an A+. In computing our short-term care ratings, we assess a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This category is typically a reliable assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. 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. The final metric we looked at in this category is the number of residents that returned home from the facility. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively insignificant. While this facility had some deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. There are quite a few factors included in this grade. Many of these subcategories are tied to staffing levels. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of turning patients more frequently.

In the last category, this facility also was awarded a very strong long-term care rating, with a grade of A-. This wrapped up a rare straight A profile. When facilities receive this kind of score in this category it is a good sign for patient care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.