Birchwood Care Center

The main reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an excellent inspection score. Its inspection grade was far better than its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave this facility an A. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this nursing home's more impressive category scores was in the area of long-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a B+. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 96.039604 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility was given its third most favorable category grade in the category of short-term care. We awarded this facility a C in this area, which is a decent grade. Our short-term care grades are believed to be more important for individuals needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The final category we rated was nursing. Unfortunately, we gave it an F in this category, which is a poor score. This is obviously a significant disappointment. Nursing ratings are heavily correlated with quantity of nursing care available. This facility provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is an alarmingly low total. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing ratings. This facility fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.