Regency at Bluffs Park

Regency at Bluffs Park is a small nursing home located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This facility appears to be one of the higher-rated nursing homes we assessed. A grade of this caliber requires first-rate scores across the board. We were not surprised to discover that this is the top facility in the city. This place's strong report card was highlighted by its short-term care rating, which is addressed in the next paragraph.

In addition to faring well overall, this nursing home received high marks in our short-term care category as well. It received our highest score in that category with a score of A+. Short-term care grades are vital for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a wide scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. This facility excelled in the two key staffing areas we assessed. It supplied about 50% more care from physical therapists and registered nurses than a typical nursing home. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of facilities in the nation with 64.4 percent of its patients returning home.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our nursing score is primarily based on a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provided 5.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This was one of the highest figures we found. Furthermore, a significant portion of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. In addition to looking at levels of nursing care, we also looked at a few quality measures in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these metrics as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

This facility has earned near flawless inspections in recent years. We gave them an A- in this category. Inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies an immediate risk to resident safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

This facility's least impressive area is long-term care, which is the last area we analyzed. In this area, we awarded this facility a grade of D. We want to to draw your attention to this potential weak link, however, you shouldn't over-emphasize one category either. For patients seeking a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. In addition to providing above average levels of nurse staffing, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. These scores were clearly more respectable than several of its other statistics in this category. Surprisingly, this place also wasn't as bad as we expected at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Although it had 2.71 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted score wasn't bad since it had more complicated patients.