Ambler Extended Care Center

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection grade. Its inspection score was far better than its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave this facility an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility an B. In computing our nursing scores, we look at both staffing levels and the training levels of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of moving a resident more frequently.

We also awarded this facility a decent grade in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of C. Our long-term care grade assesses a facility's personal care instead of the skilled therapy or healthcare services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. We were somewhat surprised to discover that this facility vaccinated a relatively low 55.78635 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Nevertheless, this facility excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Moving on to our fourth category, this nursing home didn't fare very well. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in short-term care, this is this nursing home's weakest grade. In our short-term care assessment, we seek to craft a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze the nursing home's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.8 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics was damning for this facility's short-term care grade.