The Villa at West Branch

The Villa at West Branch is a facility located in West Branch, Michigan. This city has 10,691 people. This nursing home is a very respectable facility, with an overall grade of B. You can certainly do much worse than this place. The best part of this nursing home's impressive report card is its inspection score. Inspection reports are discussed in the next section

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to create an immediate risk to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This facility also received an impressive short-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B+ in this area. In the area of short-term care, we strive to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. One of this nursing home's strength is that it offers more hours of care from registered nurses to its residents. The final measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. It fared as well as just about any nursing home in Michigan in this area with 56.2 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, at most facilities, less than half of their short-term residents ever return home.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing rating assesses many factors, however, the main one is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a patient at least once a day.

The final area we assessed is long-term care. We gave this facility a B- in that category. With our long-term care grade, we look at the volume of services offered by a nursing home, along with a series of quality measures. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.41 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than most nursing homes.