Great Barrington Nursing and Rehabilitation

One of the reasons this place turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this category. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category generally have few severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some 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 consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Additionally, this facility also was awarded favorable long-term care grades this year. In fact, we awarded it one of our higher scores in that category, with a score of B+. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 88.535034 percent of its residents. This is slightly below what we anticipated but still a decent figure. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Our nursing grade is primarily based on a facility's 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 place 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 generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we analyzed is short-term care. This nursing home received a strong short-term care grade in our assessment, with a B-. While this wasn't quite as dominant as many of its other scores, this remains a decent score for that category. Short-term care grades are often used to gauge a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To provide quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to feature higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 3.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.