Borgess Gardens

Borgess Gardens is an average-sized non-profit nursing home located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. This nursing home received a strong grade of B+ overall. We found it to be better than most of the facilities in Kalamazoo, which has a city grade of B. This nursing home truly has plenty of good features. This nursing home's impressive report card was highlighted by its short-term care rating, which you can find in the next paragraph.

We also found that this facility excelled in our short-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. In the area of short-term care, we strive to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. This nursing home provides more services with physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. This is usually a favorable sign. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of facilities in the nation with 67 percent of its residents returning home.

This facility received high grades in the area of nursing as well. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Our nursing score is primarily based on the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home boasts a really impressive 4.6 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, of which a significant portion of those hours were provided by registered nurses. This is one of the more highly trained levels of nurses. In addition to looking at levels of nursing care, we also looked at a few quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as predictive measures of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

This facility also performed well in our inspection category, which is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. In fact, we awarded it an impressive grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest grades. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite minor. This place received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to be an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

The next category we looked at is long-term care, which is this nursing home's worst category. It received an F in this category, which is clearly somewhat concerning. For residents seeking a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. Based on its grade in this category, we were surprised to learn that this facility received good marks in both nursing hours and its vaccination records. In fact, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This statistic is better than the majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this facility also keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.66 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.