Willowdale Health Services

In addition to receiving a strong overall rating, this facility earned an A+ inspection rating. This score is based on its recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can offer a facility. Our inspection ratings are based on many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This facility received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. Nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this nursing home an A-. The nursing score assesses many components, most of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also received a very strong long-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be this nursing home's third best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility a score of A-. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this place 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 an impressively low figure.

The next category we scored is short-term care, where this facility was awarded a grade of B. Believe it or not, this was this facility's worst area. A facility is doing something right when it's worst grade still rates higher than most other nursing homes. Our short-term care grade is commonly used to score a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To offer highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally must offer higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.