Ephrata Manor

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't 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.

To complement its first-rate assessments in other areas, we awarded this facility a score of A for its short-term care score. In the category of short-term care, we seek to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with nurse staffing levels. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In the last category we analyzed, this nursing home was given a very favorable grade of A- in our long-term care category. With this score, the facility rounded out a straight A report card. Facilities that receive this type of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are well cared for. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 99.16201 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not leave this to chance. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.