Palms Care Center

This nursing home received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially wanted to point out its excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded it an A- in this area. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as 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. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

This facility really excelled in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A-. Not many nursing homes performed more favorably in this area. Nursing homes that do well in this category typically provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our third area, this nursing home also earned a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is an above average score in this category. Short-term care grades are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we considered the number of residents that were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 4.7 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The last category we scored is nursing. This nursing home was awarded an above average nursing rating in our assessment, with a B. This nursing home truly didn't have any weaknesses. We scrutinized the licensure of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses spent with residents, in determining our rating in this area. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these statistics as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.