Fox Subacute at Mechanicsburg

While this nursing home's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it an A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid nursing homes with too many deficiencies flagged. Although this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In that area, we awarded this facility an D. Nursing ratings are primarily tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provided just 0.5 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This number is significantly below the national average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing scores. This place performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

The next area we looked at was short-term care, where this nursing home was given an F. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. With its grade in this area, we were not surprised to discover that this nursing home is well below average in terms of the quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Honestly, this was about what we expected here. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.3 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Switching gears to our fourth category, this nursing home did not perform well in this area either. With a rock bottom grade of F in long-term care, this is about as as uninspiring as it gets. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is better than most nursing homes. To our surprise, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.04 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.