Whittier Westborough Transitional Care Unit

Whittier Westborough Transitional Care Unit is a very-small facility located in Westborough, Massachusetts. It looks like this nursing home is among the highest-graded nursing homes we looked at. Being awarded an A+ in our grading system requires top-notch performance across the board. We really couldn't find many bad things to say about this place. Its grades are impeccable. One of the major highlights of this facility's exemplary profile is its short-term care grade. We discuss short-term care in the next section.

One of the reasons this place received a great overall grade is that it earned an A+ in short-term care. This is as good as it gets in this category. Short-term care grades are critical for patients needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires more highly-skilled nursing. This includes a vast spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. This facility excelled at the highest level in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered about 50% more care from physical therapists and registered nurses than the average nursing home. This is an excellent sign. The final measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it performed as well as just about any nursing home in Massachusetts in this area with 63.4 percent of its patients returning home.

This nursing home also received an A+ inspection score, making it one of the rare nursing homes to receive multiple A+'s in our category grades. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Our nursing grade is largely associated with a facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provides an incredible 6.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. Out of that total, many of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the most highly trained levels of nurses. On top of providing high levels of nursing care, this place also excelled in the quality-based metrics we assessed. It performed as well as any nursing home in the state when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

The fourth category we looked at was long-term care, where this facility received a grade of A. This topped off an elite profile. Very few nursing homes earned an A- or better in every single category. In a long-term care environment, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. We weren't able to track down information on vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.