Susque View Home

Although this place's overall grade was not a highlight, it actually received a slightly more favorable score in the category of inspections. We awarded it a B- for this category, which is a decent score. Our inspection ratings are based on datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key item to look for on these reports. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to resident safety. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.

One of this facility's higher category scores came in the area of short-term care. This turned out to be its second most respectable category. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. Our short-term care ratings are critical for residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. We were surprised to find that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. It offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well below average.

We gave this facility a grade of just D for our nursing rating. Our nursing grade analyzes several components, however, the paramount one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. With a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, this nursing home's nurse staffing levels were far below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing ratings. This nursing home performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

The last category we rated was long-term care, is this facility's least impressive area. We awarded this facility a D in that category. In a long-term care environment, the primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. One of the data points we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. Thankfully, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 98.81516 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.