West County Care Center

Although this nursing home's overall grade was terrible, it actually didn't perform as poorly in the area of nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- for this category. There are quite a few criteria included in this grade. Many of these subcategories are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place.

This facility also didn't fare poorly in the category of short-term care. Indeed, we awarded it a B- in that category, which happens to be another one of its more respectable scores. Our short-term care grades are probably most critical for residents in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. We found that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. The facility supplied fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below average.

We wanted to note that this nursing home received a lowly F for its inspection grade. An F in this area is very concerning because it usually points to red flags on the nursing home's inspections. For nursing homes that received this bad of an inspection score, we would scrutinize the severe deficiencies on its inspection report. This facility was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we found is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they created a threat to resident safety or health. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

The last area we analyzed is long-term care. Sadly, it received an F for this category, which is a poor grade. Nursing homes that don't score well in this category often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in some of the areas of routine healthcare services we looked at. Once we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were a bit concerned this facility vaccinated just 72.560974 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.