Altoona Center for Nursing Care

Although we were not high on this place overall, we awarded it a grade of B+ for our inspections rating. This grade is far better than the nursing home's overall score. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid places with a bunch of severe deficiencies flagged. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. In that area, we gave this nursing home an C. There are several factors within this grade. Most of the factors are tied to nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a low total compared with most nursing homes. Lastly, nursing grades also consider quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

Another issue was the F this facility received in the area of short-term care. Our short-term care ratings are based on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well off the national 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 53.40909 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.