Luther Crest Nursing Facility

This facility received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially wanted to emphasize its nearly flawless inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this area. Our inspection grades account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area typically have 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This nursing home really excelled in the area of short-term care, where it received a grade of A. Very few nursing homes performed better in this category. Our short-term care grade is often used to assess a facility's rehabilitation services. To provide good rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Nursing scores are based in large part on quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 nursing home Pennsylvania in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning patients more frequently.

The final category we graded is nursing, was this facility's least impressive category. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in this area. This is one of just a few weak points of an otherwise impressive report card. For prospective residents seeking a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. We were pleased to find that this facility vaccinated 98.05195 percent of its residents for pneumonia. To our surprise, this facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.