Brendan House

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great facility is that it received a strong short-term care score. In that category, we gave this facility an A. In calculating our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. When calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we look at the amount of time nurses are caring for patients as well as the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning our next category, we gave this facility a score of A for its long-term care score. This is a dominant score. When facilities receive this type of score in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 98.75 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Lastly, this nursing home also received excellent government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our best scores in the area of inspections, with an A-. Few nursing homes earned an A- or better in every single category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection ratings. 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 end up being quite minor. This nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.