Good Shepherd Home-Bethlehem

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. Inspection grades account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area usually have very few of these 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also awarded this facility a grade of A+ for its long-term care grade. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 87.86611 percent of its patients. This is a few points below what we were hoping for. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our nursing rating analyzes many subcategories, however, the most important consideration is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving patients even once per day.

In the last category we assessed, this nursing home was awarded a very strong grade of A in our short-term care category. With this grade, the facility wrapped up a straight A profile. In calculating our short-term care scores, we analyze a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This rating is considered to be a fair measure of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.