Birchwood Care Center

In addition to performing well in its overall score, this facility earned even higher grades in the area of long-term care. It received one of our best grades in that category with an A. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 55.303032 percent of its patients, which is a few points lower than we anticipated. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to another one of this nursing home's strengths, it also earned a very impressive inspection score. In fact, inspections proved to be one of its best category grades. In that area, we gave this nursing home an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. This nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to create an imminent risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. This wasn't quite on par with some of its other category grades mentioned above. The nursing grade includes many factors, but the primary one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This place provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place excelled in some of the quality measures we assessed. It performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care provided.

The last category we assessed is short-term care. We awarded it a grade of C in that area. This is a decent grade in this category. Our short-term care ratings are likely most important for individuals needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. This means not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.