Washington Rehabilitation and Nursing Center

Washington Rehabilitation and Nursing Center is in Chipley, Florida. The city has a population of 17,412 people. This nursing home received an overall grade of B, which is a good grade. Based on our ratings, you could do much worse than this facility. The best part of this facility's strong profile is its inspection grade. Inspection grades are discussed in the next paragraph

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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.

This nursing home really excelled in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed more favorably in this category. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a deadly ailment for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not take any chances. This facility also keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 1.28 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a substantially lower hospitalization rate than the majority of nursing homes.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. Our nursing grade considers a number of subcategories. The most important variable is the number of hours nurses spend with residents. With 4 hours of nursing care per resident daily, this facility surpassed the national average. We also look at the qualifications of these nurses and add more weight to hours worked by skilled nurses. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused statistics. Specifically, we look at the percent of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these statistics as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The next category we scored was short-term care, which was this nursing home's weakest category. We awarded this facility a D in that category. Of course, this score hurt the nursing home's overall grade to some degree. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we assess a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This rating is typically a fair measure of the facility's rehabilitation. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 35.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home.