Brightwood Center

The main reason this facility received a decent overall score is its excellent health inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better grades in that category, with an A. This is a notably better grade than the place's overall grade, which was decent but certainly not elite. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively minor. Sadly, this nursing home was hit with a category L deficiency, which was not what we expected based on its inspection score. This category of deficiency indicates inspectors identified a widespread deficiency putting patient safety or health in imminent danger. While other aspects of this nursing home's inspection report were favorable, we have some reservations.

Additionally, we awarded this facility a B+ in our long-term care category. This is one of our more impressive scores. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. Once we assessed the quantity of nursing care, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a dangerous health condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with an D. In computing a nursing home's nursing grade, we look at the number of hours nurses commit to patients and the skill levels of the nurses. With only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis, this facility's nurse staffing levels were quite a bit below the national average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This facility performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these statistics to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.

The last category we looked at is short-term care. We gave it an abysmal F for this area, which is a bottom of the barrel score. This is obviously a major concern. In our short-term care assessment, we endeavor to forge a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze a facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Based on its weak grade in this category, we weren't stunned to find that this place provides substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other nursing homes. The final item we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics sunk this facility's short-term care score.