Nazareth Health and Rehab Center

One of the reasons this ended up being a strong facility is that it received an impressive inspection score. In fact, inspections is its best category. In this area, we gave it an A. Inspection scores are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home was awarded an impressive long-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are well cared for. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 96.137344 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.69 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to the category of nursing care, this facility didn't perform quite as well in this area as some of the categories discussed above. Nevertheless, a grade of B- in this category is by no means a bad score. Our nursing grade is mostly based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 3.2 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, we also considered a few quality-based statistics in this category. Although this facility didn't rank well in terms of its nursing hours, it performed better in some of the quality measures we looked at. For example, in terms of the number of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, this nursing home fared better than the national average. This is often a reliable indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented with better nursing care.

The last area we looked at is short-term care. We gave it a grade of C in that area. This is a perfectly acceptable grade in this category. Our short-term care grades are believed to be more important for patients requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. This facility provides more services with physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. The final measure we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 42.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.