Wedgwood Gardens Care Center

In addition to faring well overall, this nursing home received a nearly flawless inspection report. Therefore, it received one of our best grades in that category with an A+. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its first-rate assessment, this facility also was given a strong long-term care grade, with a score of A. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Nursing grades are primarily tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a resident even once per day.

Switching gears to our final area, this facility received a highly favorable short-term care rating. We gave it a B+ in that category, wrapping up one of our more favorable report cards. In determining our short-term care scores, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This area is often a useful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's residents returned home.