Berlin Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

While we were not very complementary of this facility's overall grade, it actually received a very impressive inspection report this year. In fact, it received an excellent inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our best scores in that category with an A-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home was given its second highest category grade in the area of short-term care. We awarded this facility a B- in this category, which is a reasonably acceptable score. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we look at a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is typically a useful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the average facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. Finally, we considered the number of residents that eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below the national average.

This facility's second least favorable score is long-term care, where it earned a grade of just D in that category. This is a well below average score. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category may not provide the kind of consistent 24/7 care that some other facilities offer. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. Candidly, we were a bit worried that this facility vaccinated 75.4386 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is quite a few points less than the national average. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best feature in this category.

The last category we assessed is nursing, where this nursing home received a poor score here as well. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this category, which is obviously a major disappointment. Our nursing grade looks at the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This place provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is not a very impressive figure. To go along with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this facility also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of patients experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This nursing home had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility.