Palm Gardens Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation

We want to point out that this nursing home outperformed its overall grade in the category of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best scores in that area with an A+. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Another one of this nursing home's better category grades was in the area of long-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B+. It actually outperformed most facilities in this area. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are kept in good health. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 95.01916 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is better 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 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Additionally, we gave this nursing home an F in the category of short-term care. Our short-term care grades are vital for individuals needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional skilled nursing. This means a broad range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.2 percent of its patients returning home.

This nursing home's worst category was nursing, which is the final category we looked at. It received an abysmal F in this area. In spite of multiple solid scores in other areas, this score is still of a concern so we would like to to point it out. Nursing ratings are based largely on quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home offered a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Unfortunately, this place also had terrible marks in some of the quality-based metrics to go along with its low nursing hour totals. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing pressure ulcers. This facility was at more than twice the national average in this metric. This is quite alarming when you consider that many bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. This ended up sealing the facility's fate of earning a very weak nursing rating.