Premier Washington Rehabilitation and Nursing Center

While we were not high on this facility overall, we awarded it a B+ for our inspections rating. This score is far more impressive than the place's overall grade. 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 these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be quite insignificant. This nursing home was hit with 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In that area, we gave this facility an B-. Nursing grades are largely associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it scored well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

As it turns out, this facility only received a D for its short-term care rating, which is not one of our better scores. Our short-term care scores are vital for people requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 3.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, about half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.

The final area we looked at is long-term care. It received an F in this category, which is a rock bottom grade. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means the nursing home didn't perform well in our measures relating to patient care. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. We were a bit concerned this facility vaccinated just 80.02497 percent of its patients for pneumonia. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This was its best score in this category.