Briarwood The

While this place's overall score was not a highlight, it did receive a very good grade in the area of inspections. In fact, we gave it a B+ for that area, which is one of our better grades. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. It is typically best to avoid places that have a long list of severe deficiencies. Although this place had some deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

We also want to point out that this facility received a decent grade in our nursing category. We awarded it a grade of C in the area. Nursing scores are mostly tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality metrics. With less than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this subcategory. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning patients even once per day.

Unfortunately, this facility only earned a grade of D for its short-term care rating, which is not a score to write home about. Our short-term care scores are based on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a broad spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. Considering its grade in this category, we were not surprised to discover that this nursing home was well below average in terms of the number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the figures we looked at. Honestly, this was about what we expected here. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that were able to return home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was well below the national average.

The last area we scored was long-term care. This facility received a very poor grade of F in that area. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means the nursing home did not perform well in our quality measures relating to patient care. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. Candidly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility vaccinated 81.034485 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is several points lower than what we expected. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This was its best feature in this category.