Careage of Whidbey

While we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a B- for our nursing rating. Our nursing rating is based on a handful of components, however, the most important consideration is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. According to CMS records, this facility averaged 3.9 hours of nursing care per patient daily. Keep in mind that when we calculate our nursing ratings, we apply more weight to hours performed by nurses with a higher level of training. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these statistics. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this datapoint.

We were also stunned to discover that this nursing home received a solid short-term care score this year. We awarded it a B- in that category. Short-term care ratings are based on the nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a broad scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. This place performed well in this area with 65.5 percent of its patients returning home. For most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

Unfortunately, this facility's third best category was long-term care. However, with a grade of D in this category, it still performed somewhat poorly. For long-term care residents, the primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 94.375 percent of its residents, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this facility also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0.73 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.

Turning our final area of inspections, this facility received an F here. We would advise paying special attention to any deficiencies on a facility's inspection reports when it receives this bad of an inspection grade. We suggest you pay close attention to the level of severity of those deficiencies. This facility had 7 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we can say is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they caused a risk to resident health or safety. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.