Westhills Village Health Care Facility

Westhills Village Health Care Facility is one of eight facilities located in Rapid City, South Dakota. We gave this nursing home an impressive overall rating of A+. This is far superior to the average nursing home in Rapid City. Based on our ratings, this nursing home is simply as good as it gets. Keep reading to see this facility's category scores, which are equally impressive. You really can't do any better than a straight A report card.

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for inspections. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down deficiency data for this facility. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. We looked at the skill-level of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses worked with patients, in determining our grade in this area. This place provided 5 hours of nursing care per patient daily, which is among the higher figures in the country. A significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the most skilled levels of nurses. We are very impressed by these figures. On top of offering high levels of nursing care, this place also excelled in several of the quality measures we looked at. With below five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home South Dakota in this category. This is usually a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Many pressure ulcers can be avoided by offering better nursing care and having a policy of moving patients even once per day.

The next category we analyzed was long-term care. Adding to its strong profile, this facility also performed well in this category. In fact, it received a of A in the category. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. On top of offering very favorable levels of nursing care and other staffing, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This figure is also significantly better than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to our fourth area, this nursing home also performed well in the short-term care category. We awarded it an A for this area. This topped off truly elite report card. In determining our short-term care scores, we analyze a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is generally a solid assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. This facility excelled at the highest level in two key staffing areas we assessed. It provided about 50% more care from physical therapists and registered nurses than the average facility. The final metric we looked at in this area is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. It fared respectably with 47.6 percent of its patients returning home.