The Gardens of Port St Lucie

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home excelled in our shot-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. In our short-term care rating, we seek to create a sound barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze the facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home 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 who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Our nursing score is mostly associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 nursing home Florida 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 employing a protocol of moving a patient even once per day.

In the last category we scored, this facility received a very strong grade of A in our long-term care category. With this score, the facility rounded out a straight A profile. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.