Norwood Health Ctr-Central

Although we did not have many positive things to say about this facility's overall score, it earned a somewhat respectable government inspection report this year. It received a decent score in that area with a B-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. 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. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. Nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of B-. Our nursing grade assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, nursing scores also consider quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically an indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

This facility was awarded its next most favorable category score in the area of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this category, which is a decent grade. In determining our short-term care scores, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is more often than not a useful measure of a facility's rehabilitation services. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the measures we assessed. The important question is whether this also impacted quality of care. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The final category we assessed was long-term care. For this category, we gave this facility a B-. In our long-term care score, we assess the sheer quantity of services provided by a facility, as well as a series of quality metrics. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 92.22222 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be a bit less than we expected but still a decent percentage. On a more positive note, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.