Lawson Nursing Home

With an address in Clairton, Pennsylvania, Lawson Nursing Home is one of just a couple nursing homes in this area. This nursing home was awarded an A- overall, which is one of our more impressive scores. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top third of all nursing homes nationally. The best part of this nursing home's strong report card was its inspection reports. Inspection reports are discussed in the next paragraph

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also received A+ government inspections in recent years. Its inspections were nearly flawless. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This nursing home also was strong in the category of short-term care, where it received a grade of A. Only a select group of facilities performed better in this category. Our short-term care grades are arguably more important for individuals needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Remarkably, this nursing home provides about 50% more services from physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. This is a very favorable sign. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of nursing homes in the nation with 60.9 percent of its residents returning home.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. Our nursing score is based on quite a few datapoints, but the primary consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provides an impressive 3.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. Out of this total, more than one quarter of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which is among the most highly trained levels of nurses. We add more weight to hours provided by skilled nurses in determining our nursing ratings. Finally, we also looked at a few quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility excelled in these areas, with excellent scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care a facility provides.

The next category we assessed is long-term care, which ended up being a weak spot for this facility. We gave this facility a D for the area of long-term care, rendering this the facility's least impressive area. We would nevertheless recommend that you consider all of a facility's category grades. With our long-term care score, we weigh the sheer volume of care offered by a nursing home, along with a series of qualitative statistics. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility administered the vaccine to a relatively low 70.08547 percent of its residents. Surprisingly, this facility actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This is its best feature in this category.