The Wexford House

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. Our nursing grade is primarily tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving patients more often.

Turning to the third category, this nursing home also earned a grade of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this category. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 98.45758 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next area we scored is this nursing home's poorest category. However, even in its weakest link we still awarded it a decent grade of B- for short-term care. In computing our short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is frequently a reliable assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below the national average.