Steward Sebastian River Medical Center

We also found that this facility excelled in our short-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 7.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also received an A+ nursing grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. Our nursing score is mostly tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this nursing home received a strong score of A in our long-term care category. For residents seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We weren't able to find information on vaccination rates. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Another impressive feature for this place is its inspection rating. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an A, finishing off its straight A performance. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.