Palm Garden of Ocala

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility really outperformed its overall grade in the area of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best grades in that category with an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being quite minor. This nursing home was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

Turning to the category of long-term care, we awarded this nursing home a score of A- in that area. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in this category it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. One of the factors we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 99.0689 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we gave this nursing home an F. This is certainly not one of this facility's better areas. In determining a nursing home's nursing score, we consider the amount of time nurses are seeing residents and the level of licensure of the nurses. This place provided only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing scores. This facility performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these metrics to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care.

Moving on to our last area, this nursing home did not perform well. Due to a rock bottom grade of F in short-term care, this was this facility's worst grade. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last item we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics doomed this facility's short-term care score.