Burlington Convalescent Hospital

While we were not high on this facility overall, we awarded it a B for our inspections rating. This score is much more impressive than the facility's overall score. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

We also ended up giving this facility a fairly respectable grade in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B-. Nursing grades are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a relatively low total compared with most other facilities. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. While this place got dinged a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this area. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning a resident more frequently.

Moving on to the category of long-term care, this nursing home received a grade of just D in this area. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category likely don't provide the kind of consistent around the clock care that some other facilities offer. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 86.26943 percent of its residents. This is quite a bit below average. To our surprise, this facility was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.

Switching gears to our fourth category, we gave this nursing home a grade of D for the area of short-term care. This was the facility's weakest category grade. In forming these short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Considering its grade in this category, we were not stunned to discover that this place is well below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the figures we looked at. Honestly, this was about what we expected here. The last metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 3.9 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, this was quite a bit below the national average.