Westchase Health and Rehabilitation Center

To pair with its decent overall grade, we gave this facility an A for our inspections rating. This score is far better than its overall grade. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category generally have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

One of this nursing home's more favorable category grades came in the category of short-term care. This proved to be its second best category. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a B-. In determining these short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the typical facility. The final metric we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 5.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.

Sadly, this nursing home only received a grade of D for its long-term care grade, which is not a score to write home about. If you are seeking anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care grades. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 99.46667 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is more than most nursing homes. To our surprise, this place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.

The next category we scored is nursing. It received an abysmal F for this area, which is a very poor score. This is obviously a major concern. The nursing category consists of several data points, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home offered a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Unfortunately, this facility also had terrible scores in some of the quality-based metrics to go along with its low nursing hours. We looked at the percent of patients sustaining pressure ulcers and we were very disappointed. This place was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in this statistic. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that so many bed sores could be avoided with better nursing care. This metric helped pull down this nursing home's nursing rating significantly.