Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center - Lee Campus

To pair with its strong overall grade, we gave this facility an A+ for inspections. Arguably the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This nursing home was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This nursing home was given dominant marks in the area of short-term care. Consequently, it was given one of our best scores in that category with a score of A+. In determining our short-term care scores, we analyze a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This category is typically a useful measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 6.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. In computing our nursing ratings, we look at both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home 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 generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving a patient even once per day.

The final category we analyzed was long-term care. We awarded this facility a decent grade in this area, with a B-. Even though this is not as dominant as some of its other scores, it is still not a major area of concern. Long-term care grades are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of nursing care. This means a broad scope of personal care services, ranging from assistance with activities of daily living to routine medical services. On top of considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We weren't able to locate this facility's vaccination rates. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.