Witham Extended Care

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled at short-term care, where it received a grade of A+. In our short-term care rating, we endeavor to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze a facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech 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 metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Indiana in this area with 70.9 percent of its patients returning home.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its nursing grade. Our nursing grade is based on several factors. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provides an incredible 7.1 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. Out of this total, many of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the most highly highly trained levels of nurses. In addition to providing impressive levels of care, this place also excelled in the quality-based metrics we assessed. By way of illustration, it performed as well as any nursing home in the country when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these metrics as reliable measures of the caliber of nursing care offered.

Continuing with its amazing performance, this facility also earned an A+ inspection score. This is based on its recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the best complements we can pay to a nursing home. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This nursing home was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Switching gears to our next area, this facility also excelled in the long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it an A in that category. This topped off a straight A report card. Facilities that receive this type of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are well cared for. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down information on vaccination rates. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.