Masternick Memorial Health Care Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Inspection grades are based on many datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. 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.

Among this facility's other strengths is its top-shelf long-term care score. We gave them one of our most impressive scores in that category, with a score of A-. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of C. This facility didn't perform quite as well in this category as it did in some other categories. Nevertheless, this is still a respectable score. Our nursing grade looks at the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This place provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility surprisingly excelled in some of the quality measures we assessed. It scored well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

The last category we analyzed was short-term care, was this nursing home's least impressive area. We gave this nursing home a D in this area. This really was one of the few weak points of a very solid profile. In determining our short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This score is often a fair assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Unfortunately, we discovered that this place provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics sunk this facility's short-term care score.