The Wexford House

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+. Our inspection scores are tied to many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although 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.

Among this facility's other accomplishments is its first-rate long-term care score. It received one of our most impressive grades in that area, with a grade of A-. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. After considering the very impressive nursing hours provided by this nursing home, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. This combination proved to be effective as this place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 1.65 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

Turning to the area of nursing care, this was not one of this facility's strong suits. We awarded it a grade of D in this category. Clearly, this facility performed much better in the categories discussed above. Our nursing score assesses a handful of components, but the main consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. We do not think quantity of care was the reason for this facility's poor nursing rating. With 4.1 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, this facility actually surpassed the national average. Lastly, we turn to some quality-focused statistics in rounding out our nursing grades. Specifically, we look at the percent of patients who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these datapoints as predictive measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

This nursing home's worst area was short-term care, which is the last area we assessed. For this category, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. Short-term care scores are important for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. We found that this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its patients based on the measures we considered. The final item we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 49 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics doomed this facility's short-term care grade.