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. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 97.54363 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this place 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 next category we graded was short-term care, where this facility was given a grade of C. While this proved to be its lowest category score, this is nevertheless not a bad grade. Short-term care grades are generally used to measure a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to provide good rehabilitation services, facilities generally must provide higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 2.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.