Willow Creek Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home really outperformed its overall grade in the area of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest scores in this category with an A-. Inspection scores are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

We also awarded this nursing home a positive grade in short-term care. This nursing home received a grade of B in this area, which is one of our more impressive grades. Our short-term care grades are likely more critical for individuals requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 5.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. Nursing scores are based in large part on quantity of nursing care available. This place provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure which is well below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

The final area we rated is long-term care. This nursing home was given a C in the area. In the area of long-term care, we analyze the amount of care provided by a nursing home, rather than more medically-intensive services. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to only 74.004196 percent of its residents, which is somewhat concerning. Nevertheless, this place excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.