Smith Health Care

Smith Health Care is one of just a few available facilities in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania. It looks like this is a fine facility. We awarded it an overall grade of B, which is a respectable rating. You can certainly do much worse than this facility. This nursing home was better in some categories than others, but it did not have any poor grades in any of the major categories discussed below. More information about these categories can be found below.

In addition to being a quality facility overall, this nursing home excelled in the area of short-term care, where it received an A. Few facilities fared better in this area. Our short-term care grade is commonly used to assess a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to have higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. When we assessed this facility's nursing hours, we found it offered more care from registered nurses than most nursing homes. The last measure we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. It performed as well as just about any nursing home in Pennsylvania in this area with 68 percent of its residents returning home.

An additional quality feature for this nursing home is that it was awarded a favorable long-term care score. Indeed, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In this area, we gave this nursing home a B. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. This facility didn't perform quite as well in this category as it did in some other categories. Nevertheless, this is still a respectable score. Nursing ratings are based largely on levels of nurse staffing. Based on the CMS data, this nursing home offers 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused statistics. Specifically, we look at the percent of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these metrics as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

Finally, we also awarded this nursing home a B- for our inspections rating. This nursing home didn't have any real weaknesses. Inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. This place received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.