Wesley Health Care Center

Wesley Health Care Center is the only facility we were able to find in Saratoga Springs, New York. With an overall grade of A-, this is undoubtedly a very strong facility. You really can not do any better than this nursing home. This nursing home also received consistently good scores in each of our categories. More information about these categories can be found below.

On top of being a great nursing home overall, it also received A+ government inspections recently. Its inspections are nearly perfect. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home received a favorable long-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category with a score of B+. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 89.8263 percent of its residents against pneumonia. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, we were pleased to find facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.64 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our next category, this facility also received a grade of B+ for its short-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this area. In calculating our short-term care scores, we analyze a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is more often than not a reliable assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. This place performed as well as just about any facility in New York in this area with 59.8 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, at most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

The next category we scored is nursing, in which this facility received a B. Even though this is its poorest category rating, this is still a quality score. There are a variety of data points included in this grade. Most of the data points relate to levels of nurse staffing. This facility provided 3.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This nursing home fared well in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the percentage of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this nursing home performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided with better nursing care.