Beacon Brook Health Center

Beacon Brook Health Center is a large facility located in Naugatuck, Connecticut. This nursing home was awarded an overall grade of B, which is a very respectable score. Based on our ratings, this place looks like a good fit for most people. This place was better in some categories than others, but it did not have any bad scores in any of the major categories discussed below. More information about these categories can be found below.

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

An additional quality feature for this facility is that it received a favorable long-term care grade. Indeed, this proved to be its second best category grade. In this category, we awarded this facility a B. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. One of the factors we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 94.600945 percent of its residents. This is a great way to avoid unnecessary deaths for the aged 65 and up population. This nursing home was also able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 1.27 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a significantly lower hospitalization rate than the average nursing home.

Turning to the next area, this nursing home also received a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this area. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This category is considered to be a meaningful assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides a greater volume of physical therapist hours to its residents than the average nursing home. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that it fared better than most nursing homes in this area with 53.8 percent of its residents returning home. For most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

Our last area is nursing, in which we gave this nursing home a B- in this category. There are a host of criteria included in this grade. Most of these criteria relate to nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused statistics. Specifically, we look at the percent of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these statistics as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.