Lehigh Center

With an address in Macungie, Pennsylvania, Lehigh Center is the sole nursing home we were able to find in the city. This facility was awarded an A- overall, which is a high-end grade. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top third of all nursing homes in the country. If you scroll down, you will see this facility's category ratings, which are also strong.

One of the many reasons this place ended up being a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. This place received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

Adding to its top-shelf profile, this facility also excelled in our short-term care area. In fact, it received a grade of A- for the category. With our short-term care grade, we attempt to craft a sound barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze the facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. This nursing home provides a decent amount of services from physical therapists and registered nurses based on our assessment. Finally, we assessed the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. This place fared as well as just about any facility in the country with 60.2 percent of its residents returning home. Most nursing homes are below 50 percent in this metric.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing grade is based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 3.4 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 many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we analyzed was long-term care. We gave this facility one of our better grades in this category, with a B. Even though this is not on par with a few of this facility's other scores, it is still a positive grade. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 98.4 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, we looked at the facility's number of hospitalizations. Here we found that this place had 2.05 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days.