Concordia of the South Hills

Concordia of the South Hills is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. We awarded this nursing home an overall rating of A-, which is an elite rating. As a matter of fact, it proved to be one of the top fifteen nursing homes in the city. In spite of Pittsburgh having 31 nursing homes to choose from, this nursing home jumped off the page as a superb choice. This place's strong report card was highlighted by its short-term care grade, which you can find in the next section.

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. In our short-term care grade, we endeavor to create a valuable measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze the nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. This nursing home is the gold standard when it comes to skilled nursing staffing. In fact, it offered approximately 1.5 times as many registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than a typical nursing home. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of nursing homes in the nation in this area with 73.5 percent of its residents returning home. This is a significantly higher rate than most facilities.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Inspection grades weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this category tend to have few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Nursing grades are based in large part on quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provided 4.6 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, which is among the highest figures in the country. A significant portion of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the most skilled levels of nurses. We are very impressed by both of these statistics. In addition to looking at levels of nursing care, we also looked at a few quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these datapoints as good measures of the quality of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The final area we looked at is long-term care, in which this facility was awarded a B-. Even though this proved to be its weakest category grade, this is nevertheless not a bad grade. In calculating our long-term care scores, we assess the facility's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. In addition to offering quality levels of nursing care, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This statistic is higher than many nursing homes. This combination proved to be effective as this place keeps its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.