Sayre Health Care Center

We would like to point out that this nursing home's inspection rating exceeded its overall score. This facility earned a grade of B in this area, which is one of our better grades. Inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

In addition, we also would like to point out that this nursing home was awarded positive short-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our more favorable grades in this area, with a B. This proved to be the nursing home's second best score. Short-term care grades are often employed to judge a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to provide highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. When determining our nursing ratings, we look at both staffing levels and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is far below average. Lastly, nursing scores also consider quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

Our next area is long-term care, where we awarded this nursing home a C in that area. Long-term care grades are often used to score a nursing home's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services offered by a rehabilitation facility. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to find that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. This place also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.