Sunshine Health Care

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing grade includes many factors. The most important factor is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This nursing home provides 0.7 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also was awarded a top-shelf long-term care grade. Indeed, this is its third best category score. In that category, we gave this facility a score of A. When facilities receive this kind of grade in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 99.45055 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning to the fourth category, this facility also performed admirably in our short-term care category. We gave it a grade of A- in this area. This rounded out truly elite profile. Short-term care grades are critical for residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a broad scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.