Westward Heights Care Center

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this facility also performed well in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Very few nursing homes performed as well in this area. Inspection grades weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also received a fine short-term care score. Indeed, this ended up being its second most impressive category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. In calculating our short-term care grades, we scrutinize a facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is frequently a solid assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. There are several subcategories within this category. Most of these criteria are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a system of moving residents more often.

Turning to our next area, this facility also excelled in the long-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- for this category. This finalized a straight A profile. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is usually a good sign for patient care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 96.178345 percent of its residents, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.