Loyalhanna Care Center

In addition to being a quality facility overall, this nursing home really excelled in the area of short-term care, where it earned an A-. In our short-term care assessment, we strive to craft a valuable barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we look at the facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B in this area. Nursing grades are mostly tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a patient more often.

The next area we graded was long-term care. This nursing home received an impressive long-term care score, with a B in the area. When facilities receive this kind of score in this category it is typically a good sign for patient care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Lastly, we also found that this nursing home has received favorable government inspections in recent years. In fact, we gave it a grade of B- in this area. Inspection grades are based on several data points found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important item to look for on these inspections. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to the well being of residents. This particular nursing home received 9 deficiencies on its inspection report. Overall, this is still a good inspection report, but we'd always recommend looking into any deficiencies you find troubling.