Washington County Hospital

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also earned A+ inspections in recent years. Its inspections were nearly flawless. Arguably the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many elite scores, this facility was awarded a top-shelf short-term care score. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that area. Our short-term care ratings are likely more critical for those needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home submitted data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last measure 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 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The next category we assessed was long-term care. This facility received an above average long-term care grade, with a grade of B+ in this area. For prospective patients in need of a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 67.5 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be a few points less than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next category we scored is nursing. We gave this nursing home a solid grade in this area, with a B-. While this was not as high as many of its other grades, it is still not a poor grade. When determining our nursing ratings, we analyze both nursing hours and the training levels of those nurses. This particular facility provided just 0 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This figure is far below the national average. Finally, we also factored some quality-based metrics into our nursing grades. This nursing home was relatively weak in two of the major metrics we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally measures of the quality of nursing care provided.