Brookside Skilled Nursing Hospital

In addition to performing well in its overall score, this facility received an excellent nursing rating. We gave it an A- in that category. Our nursing score consists of a handful of factors, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Adding to its impressive category scores, this nursing home excelled in the category of inspections, where it received an A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Inspection ratings are based on datapoints located in the a nursing home's inspection reports. Places that excel in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't 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.

Turning the page to our third category, we gave this facility a grade of A- for its long-term care score. This is a dominant grade. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 97.790054 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Switching gears to our last area, this facility received a very strong short-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a B+ in this area, completing one of our better report cards. In forming these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to formulate a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.