Northwest Florida Community Hospital (Snu)

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it earned an A+ inspection grade. This is just about as good as it gets in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. This nursing home was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

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. Nursing grades are primarily tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also received a very impressive long-term care grade. In fact, this turned out to be this nursing home's third most impressive category grade. In that category, this facility received a score of A-. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home 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 an impressively low number.

In the last area, this facility also received an impressive short-term care rating, with a B+. This finished off a very favorable profile. In crafting these short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.