Washington Rehabilitation and Nursing Center

To pair with its relatively modest overall score, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for our inspections rating. This score is far better than the facility's overall grade. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, it also received a very strong long-term care score. Indeed, we awarded this nursing home a score of A-. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are well cared for. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a dangerous ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to another strength for this facility, it also earned an elite nursing grade. We gave this nursing home a score of D. We looked at the qualifications of nurses at the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses spent with patients, in computing our grade in this area. This place offered only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these metrics to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final category we looked at was short-term care. We gave it an abysmal F in this area, which is a bottom of the barrel score. This is certainly a significant disappointment. Short-term care scores are crucial for individuals in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The last measure we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics doomed this facility's short-term care grade.