Beckett House Healthcare and Rehabilitation

While we didn't give this place a good overall score, we actually gave it a strong grade in the category of inspections, where it received a B. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite minor. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home received its second most favorable category grade in the category of short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a grade of C in this category, which is a respectable grade. In the category of short-term care, we attempt to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of C. The nursing grade features numerous factors. The most important one is the quantity of hours nurses spend with residents. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. Although this place got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it did well in this statistic. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning a resident more often.

Moving on to the fourth area, this facility was given a C for long-term care, which is generally a decent grade. With our long-term care rating, we assess the volume of services provided by a facility, as well as a few qualitative statistics. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. We were pleased to find that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. This facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.