Palm Garden of West Palm Beach

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this category generally have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

This facility was awarded a favorable long-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our better grades in that area with a grade of B. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 99.48321 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is often a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B. Nursing ratings are heavily correlated with quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning patients even once per day.

Switching gears to our next area, this nursing home was awarded an acceptable short-term care grade of C. Our short-term care scores are probably most meaningful for people needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally requires more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.