Birchwood Nursing and Rehabilitation

One of the reasons this ended up being a strong facility is that it received a very impressive inspection grade. Inspections turned out to be its best category grade. In this category, we gave this facility an A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite insignificant. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also gave this nursing home a grade of A for our long-term care grade. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Turning to the area of nursing care, this was not one of this facility's strong suits. We awarded it a grade of D in this category. Clearly, this facility performed much better in the categories discussed above. In calculating our nursing ratings, we look at both staffing levels and the training levels of those nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing scores. This facility performed well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these statistics to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Moving on to the fourth area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D in our short-term care category. This was the facility's worst category score. Of course, this score hurt the facility's overall grade to a certain degree. Short-term care ratings are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we discovered that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most facilities. The last item we assessed in this category is the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its residents returning home.