Westgate

This nursing home performed well in the category of long-term care, where it received an A. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is often a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. Our nursing grade is primarily tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Lastly, nursing ratings also consider quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this place actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its patients.

This facility's least impressive area was short-term care, which is the last area we analyzed. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F in this category. Even with some respectable grades in other categories, this grade is nevertheless of a concern so we wanted to make sure you are aware. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Unfortunately, we learned that this nursing home offered less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most nursing homes. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients that were able to return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.