Fox Subacute at Mechanicsburg

To pair with its decent overall score, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. This grade is far more impressive than the facility's overall grade. Our inspection grades weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this category generally have few severe deficiencies. This facility was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home's second best category is its short-term care grade, where it was given a grade of C. Our short-term care grades are based in part on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a broad scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. We were surprised to find that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Turning to the area of long-term care, this facility was awarded a grade of just D in that category. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.05 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

Switching gears to the final area, we awarded this facility a D in nursing. This is the facility's worst category grade. Nursing grades are largely tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular facility offered a meager 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is well below the national average. This facility also had abysmal marks in several of the quality-based measures to go along with its low nursing hour totals. For starters, we looked at the percentage of patients experiencing pressure ulcers. This nursing home was at more than double the national average in this statistic. This is quite concerning when you consider that many pressure ulcers are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. This ended up sealing the nursing home's fate of earning a very poor nursing rating.