Wellington Care Center

The main reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection grade. In fact, its inspection score was far superior to its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave it an A+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively insignificant. While this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report 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.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, we gave it a superb long-term care score. Indeed, we gave this facility a grade of A-. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. 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 number.

This nursing home's second worse category was short-term care, where it received a grade of just D in that area. This is a well below average grade. In our short-term care assessment, we attempt to create a fair measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at a nursing home's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

The next category we rated is nursing, which ended up being this nursing home's worst area. Sadly, it received an abysmal F in this category, which is clearly a major concern. In determining our nursing grades, we factor in both nursing hours and the skill levels of the nurses. This particular facility averaged just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This figure is quite a bit below average. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this place also did not fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility.