Best Nursing Homes In Westwood: 2022 Ratings Released

WESTWOOD, NJ — The last two years have proved a challenging time for nursing homes in New Jersey. While many facilities continue to face an ongoing battle against the coronavirus, families in Westwood are still likely to turn to nursing homes to provide short- or long-term care for their loved ones.

One in 10 Americans over the age of 85 is a nursing home resident, according to U.S. News & World Report, which released its 2021-22 list of Best Nursing Homes on Tuesday. Nearly one-third of older Americans spend time in a nursing home during their final months of life.

In order to help families choose the right nursing home, U.S. News rated more than 15,000 nursing facilities providing care to 1.1 million people in the United States.

This year’s list rated one facility in Westwood and 358 total in New Jersey.

To compile rankings, U.S. News analyzed available public data through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Researchers looked at several outcomes, including COVID-19 vaccination requirements for residents and staff, flu and pneumonia vaccination rates, and infection control violations listed on the resident safety summary.

A nursing facility’s COVID-19 vaccination rate played a key role in its overall ranking, according to U.S. News. Homes with a staff vaccination rate below 75 percent were not considered leading facilities. Because of this, a significant percentage of short-term and long-term care programs that would have otherwise qualified as “high-performing'' were downgraded at the time of the list’s publication.

Ratings were generated based on data publicly available as of July 2021, with additional COVID-19 vaccination data publicly available as of October 2021.

More on the methodology used to compile this year’s list of best nursing homes can be found here.

Each facility was then rated on quality of long- and short-term care. Ratings range from high-performing to below average. Facilities were also assigned an overall rating ranging from high-performing to below average.

Out of more than 13,100 nursing homes rated for long-term care, 1,063 were designated as high-performing. Approximately 13,500 facilities received a short-term rating, of which only 1,651 homes earned a high-performing rating.

Here’s how nursing homes in Westwood fared:

Care One At Valley

• Short-stay rating: Better than average
• Long-stay rating: High performing
• Overall rating: Average

This year, California has the highest number of the top-ranked nursing homes on the list. In all, 201 nursing homes in California received a high-performing rating in short-term rehabilitation, and 94 facilities were designated high-performing in long-term care.

New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania follow California for the highest number of top-ranked nursing homes. Florida and Illinois fell from among the top states this year.

In addition to helping families find the best nursing home for their loved one, U.S. News published pieces on understanding vaccine mandates in nursing homes, evaluating a nursing home’s disaster plan and where your money goes when paying for a nursing home.

View this year’s full list of Best Nursing Homes here.