Birchwood Care Center

Birchwood Care Center is a small nursing home located in Hamilton, Ohio. We awarded this nursing home an overall rating of B, which is an above average grade. Indeed, it proved to be ranked among the five highest graded facilities in the city. This facility definitely has plenty of good features. The best part of this facility's impressive profile was its inspection reports. Inspection grades are discussed in the next paragraph

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned an impressive inspection score. In fact, inspections turned out to be its best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility an A-. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category generally have very few severe deficiencies. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home fared well in the category of long-term care. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that area, which happens to be one of our most favorable grades. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to this nursing home's list of strengths, it also received an excellent nursing grade. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. There are many factors within this area. Most of these criteria relate to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a patient more frequently.

The final category we scored was short-term care. We gave this facility a D for our short-term care category, leaving this as the facility's weakest grade. In our short-term care score, we seek to craft a sound gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we look at a nursing home's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 24.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.