Brookestone Gardens

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility earned an impressive grade of A in our long-term care category. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our nursing score is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning residents even once per day.

This facility also earned excellent government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our best grades in that area, with an A. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area usually have very few severe deficiencies. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information on deficiency's for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the final category we rated, this facility received a very favorable grade of A- in our short-term care category. With this grade, the nursing home rounded out a straight A report card. Our short-term care ratings are likely most critical for individuals in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more highly-skilled nursing. This means not just nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.