Brunswick Cove Nursing Center

Although we graded this facility extremely poorly overall, it surprisingly earned an impressive long-term care score this year. We awarded it a B in this category. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This is a great way to minimize negative health outcomes for the elderly population. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

As it turns out, its government inspection reports were not the source of this facility's bottom of the barrel overall grade. In fact, it received a C in this category. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was assessed 5 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but we were relieved to find that none were in category J, K or L. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to put patient safety or health in immediate harm or jeopardy. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

This facility ended up receiving rock bottom score in our nursing category. It received an F in this category. There are several factors included in this area. Many of these criteria are tied to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This nursing home offered only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility fared well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

The next category we scored is short-term care. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this area, which is a poor score. Our short-term care scores are important for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a wide scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. With a score of this caliber in this area, we weren't shocked to discover that this place was below average in two of the key staffing areas we focus on. It provided substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most nursing homes. The final item we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics doomed this nursing home's short-term care grade.