Briarwood Village

This nursing home received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially want to note its excellent short-term care score. We gave them an A- in this category. In determining these short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

We also want to emphasize this nursing home's nearly flawless health inspections in recent years. We gave them an A- in this category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This facility received even higher grades in the area of nursing. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Our nursing score analyzes a handful of subcategories, most of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The last category we graded was long-term care. In this area, we awarded this facility a solid grade of C. This actually proved to be this facility's weakest area. In our long-term care grade, we analyze the volume of services provided by a nursing home, as well as a few quality metrics. Once we concluded our assessment of the volume of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility vaccinated only 90.34749 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Nevertheless, this place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.