Westmoreland Health and Rehabilitation Center

Although we graded this nursing home incredibly poorly overall, it earned a better long-term care score this year. We gave it a B- in that category. Our long-term care grade assesses a facility's personal care instead of the skilled therapy and healthcare services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Fortunately, this facility vaccinated 99.56803 percent of its residents, which is a very solid statistic. This facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home received really poor government inspection reports in recent years, causing us to give them an F in our inspection category. An F in this category is typically a signal that we found some major red flags on its government inspection reports. When a facility has this bad of an inspection score, you should expect some severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to resident safety. This facility was hit with 6 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they caused a risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We would not recommend this facility under any circumstance.

Unfortunately, we gave this facility an F for its nursing grade. Our nursing grade analyzes the facility's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This place performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these statistics to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final category we looked at was short-term care. This facility received a bottom of the barrel grade of F in this category. In our short-term care score, we strive to craft a sound barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at a facility's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Considering its grade in this category, we were not surprised to learn that this nursing home was well below average in terms of the number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. Honestly, this was about what we expected here. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 3.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.