Waverly Heights

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this nursing home an A+. Our nursing grade analyzes the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving patients even once per day.

Turning our next category, this high end facility also performed remarkably in the area of long-term care. In this area, we awarded it a grade of A+. Only a small group of facilities fared better in this category. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 98.9011 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Switching gears to our final area, this nursing home was awarded a strong short-term care rating. We awarded it an A in this category, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. In determining our short-term care scores, we size up a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is generally a reliable measure of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.