Altoona Health & Rehab

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this nursing home has received near flawless inspections recently. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another quality feature for this facility is that it was given a favorable long-term care grade. In fact, this ended up being its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a B+. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also was given a strong short-term care grade. Indeed, we gave it an above average grade of B in this category. Our short-term care ratings are critical for individuals in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

The last area we looked at was nursing, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of B. This facility ended up being relatively strong in each category we looked at. When calculating a nursing home's nursing rating, we assess the number of hours nurses spend with residents as well as the levels of training of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.