Northbridge Health Care Center

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection score. Its inspection score was far better than its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A. Our inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also received an impressive long-term care grade. Indeed, we gave them a B+ in this category, which is one of our better. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 54.64602 percent of its residents. This is somewhat less than we expected. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We also gave this facility a middle of the road grade in the category of short-term care, where it received a C. Short-term care ratings are based on a facility's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a broad scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other types of therapy. We weren't able to find registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this nursing home. The final metric we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 4.8 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

The final category we rated is nursing. In this category, we gave this facility a C. We weighed the qualifications of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses worked with patients, in calculating our grade in this category. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused statistics. We especially look at the percentage of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these data points are indicators of the quality of nursing care, since better care can reduce these problems.