West Hill Health and Rehab

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Although this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a strong long-term care grade. Indeed, long-term care turned out to be its second most impressive category grade. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of A. For residents looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 55.870445 percent of its patients. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, we were pleased to find place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility also received a strong short-term care score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B in this area. Our short-term care grades are considered to be most meaningful for individuals in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This includes not only nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The final area we rated was nursing. We gave this nursing home a solid grade in that area, with a grade of B-. While this was not as favorable as many of its other grades, it is still not a major area of concern. There are quite a few criteria included in this category. Most of the subcategories relate to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a somewhat discouraging figure as it is well below average. Lastly, we look at quality-based metrics, such as the percentage of patients who suffered pressure ulcers and major falls. These statistics are decent measures of the quality of nursing care.