Brackenville Center

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received an A. When calculating our nursing ratings, we look at both staffing levels and the training levels of those nurses. This facility provided 3.9 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is an impressive figure which typically leads to higher quality care. Finally, this place also performed well in several of the quality-based metrics we looked at. For example, in terms of the percentage of its patients sustaining falls leading to major injury, this nursing home performed as well as any facility in the nation. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

To complement its first-rate performance in other areas, we gave this nursing home a grade of A- for our short-term care rating. Our short-term care ratings are presumably most meaningful for people needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. Finally, we looked at the number of patients that were able to return home from this facility. We found that it fared as well as just about any facility in the nation in this area with 58.9 percent of its patients returning home.

We awarded this nursing home a score of A- for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite insignificant. This place was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies an immediate risk to patient health or safety. A couple minor dings are not necessarily the end of the world.

The last area we looked at is long-term care. We gave this nursing home one of our higher grades in this category, with a B. Although this isn't as favorable as several of this facility's other grades, it is nevertheless a perfectly acceptable score. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in this category it is typically a good sign for patient care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 99.324326 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. This place also keeps its residents out of the hospital. While it had 2.11 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted statistic was better than most nursing homes since it had some more complicated patients.