Southbrook Care Center

While we did not rate this facility favorably overall, we want to point out its relatively favorable health inspections in recent years. We gave it a B+ in this area, which was much better than its overall grade. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

We also awarded this nursing home a middle of the pack score in the category of long-term care, where it received a C. In a long-term care setting, the primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. We were concerned by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated just 84.4 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Nevertheless, this place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Unfortunately, this facility received an F for its short-term care score. Our short-term care ratings are presumably most meaningful for patients in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates more skilled nursing. This includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last metric we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics doomed this nursing home's short-term care grade.

The next area we looked at was nursing, in which this facility received a bottom of the barrel score in this category also. It received an abysmal F in this area, which is obviously very concerning. When determining a facility's nursing grade, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses are caring for residents as well as the level of skill of the nurses. With just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day, this facility's nurse staffing levels were well below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at some quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing grades. This place was above average in two of the data points we considered, with good marks for avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.