Brier Oak on Sunset

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of B- in that category. Nursing grades are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually an indicator that a place has quality controls in place.

We were also stunned to find that this facility earned a solid long-term care rating in our assessment. We gave it a B- in this category. If you are seeking anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care grades. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 99.27885 percent of its patients, which is higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Incredibly, we gave this facility a C for its short-term care grade, which isn't too bad of a score. Our short-term care grades are considered to be most important for individuals needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its level of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The important question is whether this adversely impacted quality of care. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 3.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The final category we looked at is inspections. This nursing home did not receive positive inspection reports in recent years. In fact, we gave it an F here. When a place has this bad of an inspection score, you should look for severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to patient safety. This particular facility had 5 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they created a risk to patient health or safety. Finally, CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.