Atlantic Shores

In addition to faring well in its overall grade, this nursing home received high marks in our short-term care category as well. It received our highest score in that category with an A+. Short-term care grades are important for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 6.6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Adding to its impressive grades, we gave this nursing home an A for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively insignificant. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies an immediate risk to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. The nursing score weighs many components, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a patient even once per day.

The next area we rated is long-term care. In this area, we gave this nursing home a decent grade of C. This actually ended up being this facility's least impressive category. Long-term care grades are essential for individuals looking for non-healthcare services such as personal care. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is a very respectable datapoint. This nursing home was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.