Whetstone Gardens and Care Center

While this facility's overall grade was decent, it really fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our best scores. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this category tend to have few severe deficiencies. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few relatively minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

Another one of this facility's higher category grades came in the category of short-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. In our short-term care rating, we attempt to craft a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess the facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Moving on to the category of long-term care, this nursing home was given just a D in this area. For prospective residents seeking a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. We were optimistic to discover that this facility vaccinated 96.89441 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.

Moving on to the next category, we awarded this nursing home a D for the area of nursing. This is the nursing home's weakest category rating. Of course, this category pulled down the facility's overall profile to some degree. The nursing grade features a variety of subcategories. The most heavily weighted one is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. To go along with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this place also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of patients experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This facility had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average nursing home. This could be a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. These metrics pulled down this nursing home's nursing grade significantly.