Briarcliff Health Care Center

In addition to being a respectable facility overall, this facility really excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A-. Few facilities performed better in this area. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of B-. Our nursing score weighs a handful of factors, but the most important consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided just 2.9 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This figure is far below average. Lastly, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this place actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically an indicator that a facility has quality controls in place.

This nursing home's third best area is its short-term care score, where it received a C. Our short-term care grades are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a vast spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. The more important thing is determining what effect this had on the quality of care. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. This facility performed better in this statistic. This place performed better than most facilities in this metric with 52 percent of its residents returning home. With most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

The final area we rated is long-term care. This facility received a grade of C in this area. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 1.07 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a substantially lower hospitalization rate than the majority of nursing homes.