Miami Shores Nursing and Rehab Center

On top of being an elite nursing home overall, this nursing home performed well in our inspections category, where it received an A+. Very few nursing homes fared as well in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively minor. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors 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.

This facility also was given a strong long-term care grade. In fact, this turned out to be this facility's second most impressive category grade. In that area, this facility received a score of A. When nursing homes receive this type of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. Our nursing rating assesses the facility's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of skill of the nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In the last category we looked at, this nursing home was awarded a very strong grade of B+ in our short-term care category. With this grade, the facility wrapped up an elite report card. Our short-term care grade is typically employed to score a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To provide highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.