Wellsburg Center

On top of receiving a strong overall score, this facility fared even better in the area of inspections which is based on the nursing home's recent government inspections. We awarded it an A for this area, which is one of our best scores. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't 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.

Among this nursing home's other strengths is its dominant long-term care grade. It received one of our best scores in that category, with a grade of A. Facilities that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous health condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home also was awarded a strong short-term care score. Indeed, we gave it an above average grade of B in this area. 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 highly trained professionals. This grade is typically a solid measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The next category we graded was nursing. We awarded this facility a solid score in that area, with a B-. Even though this wasn't as dominant as a few of this nursing home's other scores, it is still not the end of the world. When computing our nursing ratings, we look at both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This facility averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day, which is well below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility surprisingly excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.