Nazareth Living Center

While we didn't give this place a good overall score, we did give it a relatively strong grade in the category of inspections, where it received a B. Inspection ratings are tied to many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these inspections. Most importantly, you should avoid facilities with severe deficiencies linked to endangerment of patients. This nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

We also ended up giving this facility a fairly respectable grade in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of C. Nursing scores are mostly based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. While this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed well in this area. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving patients at least once a day.

Unfortunately, this facility's third best category is short-term care. Nevertheless, with a D in this category, it still performed relatively poorly. Our short-term care grades are probably most critical for those in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Considering its weak grade in this area, we weren't shocked to find this place offers substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 4.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.

This nursing home's worst area is long-term care, which is the final category we scored. For this area, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated just 76.86567 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best feature in this category.