Westfield Center

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an impressive nursing score. In this category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A. We weighed the licensure of nurses employed by the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time those nurses were with residents, in calculating our grade in this area. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Adding to its impressive category scores, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A. Our inspection scores are tied to several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent government inspections. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also excelled in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a score of A. Very few nursing homes received a better grade in this category. Our short-term care grades are arguably more important for people in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

In our last area, this facility also was awarded an excellent long-term care rating, with an A-. This wrapped up a very impressive report card. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.