Quakertown Center

This facility received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its excellent government inspection reports in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this category. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home was hit with 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

This nursing home also was given a favorable long-term care grade. As a matter of fact, we gave it a B in that category, which is one of our more favorable scores. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 89.2057 percent of its residents. This is slightly below what we anticipated. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to the area of short-term care, this nursing home was given just a D in this category. In our short-term care score, we endeavor to forge a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we assess the facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Based on its score in this category, we were not stunned to discover that this place is well below average in terms of the number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the data we assessed. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics sunk this facility's short-term care grade.

Moving on to the next area, this nursing home really did not fare well. Due to an abysmal grade of F in nursing, this is this facility's worst category. Nursing ratings are primarily associated with a facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. This facility also had terrible scores in some of the quality-based metrics to go along with its low nursing hours. We looked at the percent of patients suffering pressure ulcers and we were disappointed. This nursing home was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in this measure. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that so many bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. This statistic helped pull down this nursing home's nursing grade quite a bit.