Westover

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this facility excelled in inspections, where it earned an A. Inspection ratings are based on several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility an A. Our nursing score assesses several datapoints, but the primary one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also was awarded a top-shelf short-term care grade. This actually ended up being its third best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of A-. In the area of short-term care, we strive to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this area is the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

In the last category we assessed, this facility received an impressive grade grade of B+ in our long-term care category. With this score, the facility wrapped up a very favorable report card. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.