Azria Health Broadwell

This nursing home received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to emphasize its nearly flawless health inspection reports in recent years. We gave them an A in this category. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

Another one of this nursing home's more impressive category scores was in the area of short-term care. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a B. Short-term care ratings are crucial for residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned an A+ nursing score. There are a host of subcategories included in this area. Most of the criteria are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we assessed was long-term care, which ended up being this nursing home's weakest category. We gave it an abysmal F for this category, which is certainly concerning. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category may not provide the type of consistent around the clock care that some other facilities offer. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Candidly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated only 60 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This was its best feature in this category.