Northwest Hospital Center Subacute Unit

On top of earning a great overall grade, this facility also received an A+ short-term care grade. Short-term care scores are crucial for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. This includes a vast scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 7.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also received a virtually flawless government inspection. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that area with an A+. This is one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively insignificant. While this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Moving on our third area, this facility was awarded an excellent long-term care score. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in this category. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this facility submitted data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the last area, we gave this nursing home an A+ for our nursing rating. This wrapped up a very favorable report card. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses worked with residents, in computing our grade in this category. This nursing home provides 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.