Welch Community Hospital

In addition to a phenomenal overall grade, this facility also received A+ nursing grade. The nursing score considers a number of datapoints. The most heavily weighted variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This nursing home averages 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home West Virginia in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of moving residents at least once a day.

This facility also was given an A+ long-term care grade, rendering it one of the few nursing homes to receive several A+ category scores. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. 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 only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last category, this nursing home also was awarded a first-rate short-term care rating, with an A-. This topped off an elusive straight A report card. In determining our short-term care scores, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This rating is considered to be a reliable assessment of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.