Berkley West Healthcare Center

Although this place's overall grade was not a highlight, it did receive a very good score in the area of inspections. In fact, we gave it a B for that category, which is one of our better scores. Our inspection scores are tied to pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important item to look for on these reports. Most importantly, you should avoid facilities that have severe deficiencies linked to risks to resident well being. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

In addition, we awarded this facility a grade of B in our short-term care category. This is one of our more favorable grades. Short-term care grades are crucial for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this facility provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 6.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

In addition, we gave this facility an F in the area of nursing care. The nursing category weighs several subcategories, most of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. With only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, this place's nurse staffing levels were well below average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. This nursing home fared well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next area we scored was long-term care. It received an F for this area, which is a very poor grade. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care may not provide the type of consistent 24/7 care that some other nursing homes provide. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Surprisingly, this place actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.