Grace Living Center-Brookwood

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this place also received top notch inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our higher grades in this area, with an A. Our inspection grades are based on items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

This facility also was awarded a favorable short-term care score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this category. Our short-term care grade is often used to gauge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To offer highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. When computing a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses are seeing residents and the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Switching gears to the final category, this facility was given an acceptable long-term care score. Even though this wasn't quite as elite as many of its other category grades, this is really not a bad grade. For prospective residents seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 99.61539 percent of its patients. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.