CareCore at Willowood’

One of the reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it earned a very impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections turned out to be its best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being quite insignificant. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to resident safety or health. A few minor dings aren't necessarily something to panic about.

This nursing home also received an impressive short-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B in this area. Our short-term care grade is often used to measure a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To have high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must feature higher levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return home from this facility. We found that 5.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This facility also was given an impressive long-term care score. Indeed, we gave it an above average score of B in this area. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 98.4375 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a proven method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the elderly population. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep 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 number.

The final category we rated was nursing. We gave this facility an acceptable score in this area, with a B-. Even though this is not as favorable as some of this nursing home's other scores, it is still not the end of the world. The nursing category includes quite a few subcategories, many of which are associated with levels of nurse staffing. This facility provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a lower figure than we were hoping for. Lastly, our nursing scores also factor in some quality-focused statistics. We look at the percentage of residents who suffered pressure ulcers and major falls. These metrics are decent indicators of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these issues.