The Retreat at Brightwater

This facility really fared well in long-term care, with an impressive grade of A in this category. This really helped its overall grade quite a bit. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 69.76744 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is slightly below what we anticipated but still a decent percentage. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home also excelled in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Few facilities performed better in this area. Our short-term care ratings are arguably more meaningful for patients in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. This means not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

We also awarded this facility a favorable grade in nursing. This facility earned a grade of B+ in this category, which is one of our better grades. Our nursing rating consists of many datapoints, many of which are associated with nursing hours. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving a resident more frequently.

In our final category of inspections, we gave this facility a D. This turned out to be this facility's worst grade and it really hurt its overall grade. Our inspection rating is based on the nursing home's government inspections. Since the information is collected by government inspectors, we weight it heavily in overall grade. Inspection scores weigh many items on the facility's inspection reports. If you see severe deficiencies on the inspection reports, this is generally a bad sign. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we found is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they posed a risk to patient safety or health. Finally, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this place was assessed significant government fines in recent years in excess of $50,000. This generally signifies that CMS inspectors became frustrated after multiple years of failed government inspections.