Brookdale Northridge

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Our short-term care grades are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a vast range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. In computing our nursing ratings, we analyze both staffing levels and the training levels of those nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Tallying yet another strong category grade, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Few facilities performed better in this category. Inspection ratings account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

Switching gears to our next category, this nursing home was given an acceptable long-term care score. Even though this isn't nearly as impressive as some of its other category grades, this is really not a poor grade. Our long-term care scores are more important for individuals in need of more traditional assistance associated with activities of daily living. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Lastly, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.