Wingate at Harwich

One of the reasons this place received a great overall grade is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. Nursing actually turned out to be its best category. In that category, we gave this facility an A. We weighed the licensure of nurses at the facility, as well as the number of hours those nurses worked with patients, in computing our grade in this area. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving a resident at least once a day.

This nursing home performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which happens to be one of our best scores. Our short-term care ratings are based in part on the facility's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a wide range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 4.9 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The next category we analyzed was long-term care. This nursing home received an above average long-term care grade, with a grade of B+ in this category. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. After looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 98.933334 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to our inspection category, it appears this nursing home has received quality inspections in recent years as well. We gave it a B- in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.