Westchase Health and Rehabilitation Center

Westchase Health and Rehabilitation Center is a large nursing home located in Houston, Texas. With a really poor overall grade of F, this facility isn't high on our list. If you aren't happy with this nursing home, you should be able to find another option in Houston, as the city has more than 25 nursing homes. We would not blame you if you're ready to stop reading and find another facility. However, if you want to learn more about this facility's category grades, inspection grades are discussed in the next section.

While this facility's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually didn't perform terribly in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B- for that category, which is one of our better scores. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Although this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. A few minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

This nursing home's second most favorable category was short-term care, but it still received a grade of just D in that category. This turns out to be a relatively poor score. Our short-term care grades are considered to be most important for individuals needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This means not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. In this facility's case, we found that it provides far less registered nurse hours per patient than the typical nursing home. Given its grade in this area, this did not surprise us. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well in this area. In fact, we found that just 39.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.

We also wanted to point out that this nursing home received an F for its nursing grade. Our nursing score includes quite a few subcategories, many of which are based on nursing hours. This nursing home provides 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is slightly below the national average. Unfortunately, this facility also had terrible marks in some of the quality-based measures to pair with its weak nursing hours. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and we were disappointed. This place was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this measure.

The last category we rated is long-term care. We gave it an abysmal F in this category, which is a poor score. For prospective residents seeking a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.5567 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this facility also was not as bad as we expected at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Although it had 2.12 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted score was not bad due to it having more complex patients.