Simpson House

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this facility excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Very few nursing homes performed this well in this category. Our inspection grades are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

Contributing to its elite profile, this nursing home also performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, it received a score of A in that area. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Our nursing grade analyzes the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of skill of those nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Pennsylvania in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving a patient more often.

The final area we assessed was long-term care, in which this nursing home was given a B. While this is its lowest category rating, this is nevertheless an above average score. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the data points we considered on top of nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 96.464645 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a proven method to avoid unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.