Berlin Health & Rehab Center

This facility's overall grade was bolstered by the fact that it has received favorable health inspections in recent years. We gave them a strong score in that area, with a B+. This is a much better grade than the facility's overall score. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively minor. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

Additionally, we also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received favorable short-term care marks this year. We gave them one of our more favorable grades in this category, with a B. This turned out to be the nursing home's second highest score. Our short-term care grade is often employed to grade a facility's rehabilitation services. In order to have highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of B- in this category. The nursing score includes quite a few subcategories, most of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Lastly, nursing scores also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.

The final area we assessed is long-term care. Sadly, it received an F in this area, which is a rock bottom grade. This is clearly a major disappointment. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is a bad sign for patient care and it may mean that the facility is not as well-staffed. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Candidly, we were a bit alarmed this facility provided the vaccine to just 88.489204 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.