Steward Sebastian River Medical Center

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ in the area of short-term care. In determining our short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. This facility is the gold standard in terms of skilled nursing staffing. In fact, it supplied roughly 50% more physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than a typical facility. The final measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Florida in this area with 70.9 percent of its residents returning home.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Nursing grades are mostly associated with a facility's level of nurse staffing. This place provides an incredible 7.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Out of that total, many of the hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the more highly trained levels of nurses. In addition to offering high levels of nursing care, this facility also excelled in the quality-based metrics we looked at. For example, it performed as well as any facility in the state in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these statistics as good indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.

This facility also received a dominant long-term care grade. This actually turned out to be its third best category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a score of A. For prospective patients looking for a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another impressive feature for this place is its inspection grade. In that category, we gave this facility an impressive grade of A-, completing its straight A performance. Our inspection grades are based on several data points located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.