Wurtland Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really fared well in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our best scores. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

This nursing home also received a positive long-term care score. In fact, we awarded them a grade of B+ in that category, which is one of our more favorable scores. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Sadly, we gave this facility an F for its short-term care score. In our short-term care category, we attempt to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess a nursing home's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last measure we considered in this category is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 3.5 percent of its patients returning home.

Switching gears to our next area, this facility really didn't perform very well. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in nursing, this is its weakest category. Nursing ratings are based largely on quantity of nursing care available. With a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day, this place's nurse staffing levels were well below average. On top of ranking below average in nursing hours per resident, this nursing home also had poor scores in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of patients sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility was at approximately 1.5 times the national average in both of these statistics. This is a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. These metrics pulled down this nursing home's nursing grade significantly.