Palm Garden of Pinellas

Palm Garden of Pinellas is one of five available facilities located in Largo, Florida. We gave it an overall grade of B-, which is a middle of the pack score. In our view, this facility would be a good fit for quite a few people. The best part of this nursing home's report card was is its inspection score. Inspection reports are discussed in the next section.

The primary reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable health inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in that category, with an A-. This is a much better grade than the place's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Inspection ratings are tied to many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This place was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A couple relatively minor dings aren't necessarily the end of the world.

Another one of this nursing home's more impressive category grades came in the category of long-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a B+. It actually performed better than most nursing homes in this category. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. On top of elite nursing hour statistics, this nursing home's vaccination record is first-rate as well. In fact, this nursing home vaccinated 99.731186 percent of its residents against pneumonia. The last datapoint we looked at is the facility's hospitalization rate. We found that this place had 3.6 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. While this admittedly wasn't as impressive as most of its other scores in this category, this figure may be skewed for some nursing homes due to the medical complexity of residents.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. There are a host of subcategories included in this category. Most of these criteria relate to staffing levels. With 4.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day, this nursing home surpassed the vast majority of facilities. Finally, we factored a few quality-based metrics into our nursing grades. This place was relatively weak in two of the major areas we looked at, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

The last area we looked at is short-term care. We gave it a grade of C in that area. This is a perfectly acceptable grade in this category. Our short-term care grades are believed to be more important for patients requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The final datapoint we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 40.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.