Brian Center Health and Rehabilitation/Goldsboro

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is as good as it gets in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility is also strong in the category of short-term care, where it was awarded a score of B+. It performed better than most nursing homes in this category. Short-term care ratings are crucial for people looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a wide scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. We weren't able to track down registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The final item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also received a strong long-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B+ in this category. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 98.7988 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.

The last area we analyzed was nursing, which proved to be this nursing home's worst category. We awarded this nursing home a D in this area. Nevertheless, we wouldn't judge this nursing home based only on one weak category, as it had many very strong grades in other areas. Our nursing rating is based on a number of subcategories. The most important variable is the quantity of hours nurses spend with residents. This place provided only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is not a very impressive figure. Although this place didn't excel in the area of nursing hours, it actually surprised us in some of the quality-based assessments in the nursing category, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home was above average in this statistic, which was one redeeming quality we found in this area.