Sunbelt Health & Rehab Center-Apopka

We also wanted to emphasize that this nursing home earned near flawless health inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this area. Inspection scores are based on several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing score is primarily associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we assessed is long-term care. Contributing to its first-rate resume, this facility also performed well in this area. In fact, we awarded it a of A- for that area. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 99.1018 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next area we graded was short-term care. This nursing home was awarded an above average nursing rating in our assessment, with a grade of B. While this is not quite as dominant as several of its other category grades, this is still one of our more impressive scores in this category. Short-term care grades are generally employed to grade a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to have quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have better levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 4.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.