Brighton Garden Tuckerman Lane

To go along with a strong overall score, we gave this place a grade of A+ for our inspection category. These inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This high end nursing home also fared very well in the area of short-term care, where it received a score of A+. Few facilities performed better in this category. Short-term care grades are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. This nursing home provides more services with physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. This is usually a favorable sign. The final measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to return home from the facility. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Maryland in this area with 63.7 percent of its patients returning home.

Contributing to its strong resume, this facility also was awarded a strong long-term care grade, with a score of A-. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. After assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 94.871796 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our last area, this nursing home received a very strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it a B+ in that category, wrapping up one of our better profiles. There are a variety of subcategories within this area. Most of the data points are tied to staffing levels. This place boasts a really impressive 4.9 hours of nursing care per patient per day, of which a significant portion was provided by registered nurses. This is one of the more highly trained levels of nurses. This is one of the higher totals of nursing hours we found at any facility. In addition to looking at levels of nursing care, we also looked at a few quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.