Brookmont Healthcare Center

In addition to receiving a strong overall score, this place also received top notch inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our higher scores in this area, with an A-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you CMS 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.

Another one of this nursing home's above average category scores came in the category of long-term care. We awarded them one of our more favorable scores in that area, with a grade of B+. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 95.625 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Nursing ratings are largely associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning residents even once per day.

The next category we assessed is short-term care. We gave it a grade of B- in this category. This is not a bad grade in this area. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to measure a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to have highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.3 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below average.