Westminster Canterbury Blue Ridge

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this nursing home excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

Contributing to its fine assessment, this facility also was given a strong short-term care score, with a grade of A. In calculating these short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. When calculating a facility's nursing score, we consider the amount of time nurses are caring for patients as well as the levels of training of those nurses. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning a patient more frequently.

The final category we assessed is long-term care, in which this facility was awarded a B. Believe it or not, this was this nursing home's least impressive area. A nursing home is doing something right when their lowest score still beats out most nursing homes. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are kept in good health. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.