Brookdale North Chandler

Located in Chandler, Arizona, Brookdale North Chandler is one of five facilities there. We gave this nursing home an overall rating of A+, which is a very strong rating. As a matter of fact, this proved to be the number one rated facility in Chandler. Based on our assessment, this facility is simply as good as it gets. Lastly, this facility had an ownership change in the last year, so we will need to make sure it keeps up its high scores under new ownership.

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. There are numerous subcategories within this area. Most of these subcategories relate to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This facility provided 4.8 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which is among the highest totals in the country. A significant portion of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the most skilled levels of nurses. We were very impressed by these statistics. In addition to providing high levels of nursing care, this nursing home also excelled in the quality measures we assessed. It performed as well as any nursing home in the nation in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

This nursing home also was awarded an A+ short-term care grade, rendering it one of the few facilities to receive several A+ category grades. In computing our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This rating is typically a solid measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. This nursing home is the gold standard when it comes to skilled nursing staffing. The facility provided roughly 50% more physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the typical facility. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of nursing homes in the nation in this area with 79.7 percent of its patients returning home.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its long-term care grade. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. One of the datapoints we considered on top of this nursing home's above average nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are a great way to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for seniors. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Adding another A+ to its report card, we also awarded this nursing home yet another perfect score in the area of inspections. Straight A+'s is something very few nursing homes in Arizona achieved. Our inspection scores are based on several items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This facility was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to be an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.