Brandywine Hall

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a B- for our inspections rating. In fact, the facility received very impressive inspection report this year. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

This facility's second best category was nursing, but even there it received a grade of just D. This is still a well below average grade. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular facility offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This number is well below the national average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. This facility fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these metrics to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to the area of long-term care, this facility was given a grade of just D in this category. When facilities receive this type of score in long-term care it is often a bad sign for resident care and it may mean that the nursing home is not as well-staffed. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We found that this nursing home administered the vaccine to just 45.51495 percent of its patients, which is quite a bit lower than we expected. Surprisingly, this place actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.

The next area we analyzed was short-term care. Sadly, it received a lowly F in this area, which is a poor grade. In the category of short-term care, we attempt to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Based on its grade in this category, we weren't stunned to discover that this facility is well below average in terms of the number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the figures we assessed. The last metric we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics doomed this nursing home's short-term care score.