Palms Care Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our nursing grade. Our nursing category is based on quite a few components, most of which are associated with nursing hours. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving patients more frequently.

This facility also excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it an B+ for that area, which is one of our highest grades. This is one of the few nursing homes with an overall score in this range which received multiple category grades this high. Inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple relatively minor deficiencies are not something to panic about.

Turning to our next area, this nursing home also received a score of B for its long-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this category. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility 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 number.

The next category we assessed is short-term care. We gave it a B- in this category. This is a fair grade in this category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to formulate a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who returned home from this facility. We found that 4.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well below average.