The Westchester House

Even though we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a decent short-term care rating this year. We gave it a grade of B- in that area, which was the closest thing to a bright spot we could find for this place. In calculating these short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. In fact, it offered fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. It is important to determine whether this is adversely impacting the quality of care. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 5.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

Incredibly, we awarded this facility a grade of C for its long-term care score, which isn't a bad grade. Long-term care grades are used to score a facility's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services offered by a rehabilitation facility. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 97.4249 percent of its patients, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. This facility keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.05 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Unfortunately, this facility only received a grade of D for its nursing grade, which was actually one of its better category grades. In calculating a nursing home's nursing grade, we look at the amount of time nurses spend with residents and the level of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home offered just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is not a very impressive figure. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing grades. This nursing home performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these metrics to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final category we looked at is inspections. This facility did not receive favorable government inspection reports in recent years. As a result, we had to give it an F here. When a place has this bad of an inspection score, you should expect some severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This nursing home was assessed 2 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they created a risk to resident safety or health. 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.