Bergen Regional Medical Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home 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 important factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Nursing grades are mostly tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home was awarded a favorable long-term care grade as well. We gave it one of our better grades in that category with a score of B. In a long-term care environment, the primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 92.27799 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which happens to be a few points lower than we anticipated but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The final area we graded was short-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of C. This actually is this facility's weakest category. This is still not a bad grade. In calculating our short-term care grades, we assess the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is considered to be a meaningful measure of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 2.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.