Westfield Center

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Our inspection grades are based on pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not consider 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.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Nursing scores are largely tied to a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving a resident at least once a day.

Turning our third category, this facility was given first-rate long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a score of A- in this area. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary deaths for the senior population. This place also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 1.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a significantly better hospitalization rate than most nursing homes.

In our last area, we awarded this facility an A+ for our short-term care score. This wrapped up a very impressive report card. In computing our short-term care scores, we scrutinize a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This category is more often than not a fair measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. This facility provides more services with registered nurses and physical therapists than most nursing homes we looked at. This is often an excellent sign. Finally, we looked at the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that it performed better than most nursing homes in the country in this area with 51.1 percent of its patients returning home.