Birch View Nursing Center

In addition to earning a quality overall score, this facility also received excellent health inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best grades in that area, with a grade of A. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. Nursing scores are mostly based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning our third category, this facility received first-rate long-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a score of A- in that category. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are well cared for. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 99.44751 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The final category we assessed was short-term care, in which this facility was awarded a B-. This actually was this facility's least impressive category. This is nevertheless not a bad grade. In computing our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to create a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this category is the number of patients that were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.