Birchwood Care Center

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned an impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections is its best category. In this category, we awarded this facility an A. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors did not deem 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.

This facility was awarded impressive marks in the category of long-term care as well. As a result, we awarded it one of our most favorable scores in that category with a score of A-. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 73.03371 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be slightly below what we expected but still a decent figure. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, at least this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home was awarded its third highest category grade in the category of short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a grade of C in this category, which is a decent grade. Short-term care ratings are critical for patients requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below average.

The final category we scored was nursing. In this category, we gave this facility a grade of C. Our nursing score features several factors. The most heavily weighted one is the number of hours nurses spend with residents. This particular facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is far below the national average. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused metrics. We look at the percentage of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these statistics are decent indicators of the quality of nursing care, since superior care can reduce these problems.