Altoona Center for Nursing Care

While we did not rate this facility favorably overall, we want to point out its relatively favorable health inspections in recent years. We gave it a respectable grade of B+ in this category, which was much better than its overall score. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively minor. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In that category, we gave this facility an B-. Our nursing grade analyzes a handful of components, but the primary consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, while this facility got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of our quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared well in this statistic.

Sadly, this nursing home only earned a D for its short-term care score, which is not an impressive grade. In our short-term care grade, we endeavor to craft a sound gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess a facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Considering its weak score in this category, we weren't surprised to find that this facility provides substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most nursing homes. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This wasn't a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 4.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, about half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.

The final area we analyzed is long-term care. It received an F in this category, which is a rock bottom grade. Facilities that don't fare well in this category typically aren't as well-staffed and are lagging in some of the areas of routine healthcare services we assessed. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We found that this nursing home provided the vaccine to a relatively low 52.208836 percent of its residents, which is several points lower than we expected. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This was its best score in this category.