Waterview Nursing Care Center

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this facility really excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Few facilities performed better in this category. Our inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. This place was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies 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.

This nursing home also received a favorable long-term care score. As a matter of fact, we gave it a B+ in that category, which is one of our more favorable scores. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home's second least favorable grade is short-term care. We gave it a grade of F in this category. This is a well below average grade in this area. In forming our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. It appears that this facility was below average in the two key staffing metrics we assessed. It offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most facilities. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 4.2 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was quite a bit below the national average.

The next category we assessed was nursing. Unfortunately, we gave it an F in this category, which is a rock bottom grade. This is obviously a significant disappointment. In computing our nursing ratings, we look at both nursing hours and the skill levels of the nurses. With a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day, this facility's nurse staffing levels were quite a bit below average. On top of receiving below average scores for nursing hours, this facility was less impressive in some of the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing grades. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and found that this place was at approximately 1.5 times the national average in this statistic. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that so many pressure ulcers are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. This statistic dragged down this nursing home's nursing score substantially.