Whisperwood Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

Although we didn't rate this nursing home favorably overall, we want to point out its relatively favorable long-term care rating this year. We gave it a grade of B in this area. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 98.9011 percent of its residents, which is higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Shockingly, this nursing home actually received a good score in inspections as well. We gave it a grade of B for that category, which is one of our better scores. Few facilities that were this poor overall earned multiple category grades of this caliber. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

We awarded this nursing home just a D for our short-term care grade. This is not a score to write home about. Our short-term care scores are important for prospective residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing. This includes a wide scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this facility provides substantially less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average nursing home. The last datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care score.

Switching gears to the fourth area, this nursing home really didn't fare well in this category either. With a very poor grade of F in nursing, this is just about as as uninspiring as it gets. Our nursing rating looks at the facility's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This place offered only 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is an alarmingly low total. In addition to its below average nursing hour totals, this nursing home also received poor marks in several of the quality-based measures we considered in computing our nursing ratings. We found that a higher percentage of this nursing home's patients experienced falls leading to serious injury.