Waunakee Manor

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of nursing. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. The nursing rating is based on several datapoints, however, the primary consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also performed well in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A. Very few nursing homes fared more favorably in this category. In computing these short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This nursing home's next most favorable area is its long-term care score, where it received a C. For long-term care residents, the primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. We were pleased to learn that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In the last category of inspections, this facility really did not fare well. Sadly, it received an F in this category. This pulled this nursing home's overall score down as we heavily weight this category. For places with poor inspection grades, you should focus on any severe deficiencies found on their inspection reports. This particular facility was hit with one deficiency by CMS. Fortunately, it was not in a category that suggests that it posed a threat to resident health or safety. Finally, we also want to point out that this nursing home received significant government fines in recent years amounting to more than $100,000. This usually suggests that a facility's poor track record has been an issue for multiple years.