Baptist Homes of Western Pennsylvania

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this facility excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes performed as well in this area. Inspection scores are based on datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area typically have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

Compounding its first-rate accomplishments in other areas, we awarded this facility a grade of A for its short-term care score. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A-. Nursing grades are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving patients more frequently.

The last category we scored is long-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a decent grade of C. This actually ended up being this facility's weakest area. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We found that this facility administered the vaccine to just 90.74733 percent of its residents, which is not a very encouraging sign. Nevertheless, this facility excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.