The Lutheran Home at Johnstown

While we were not high on this facility overall, we awarded it a B for our short-term care score. In forming these short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to devise a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of B- for our inspections rating. This score is a more impressive than the facility's overall grade. We believe that one of the most important factors in evaluating an inspection report is deficiencies. We especially focus on the severity of those deficiencies. This place was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to be an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. Our nursing grade weighs several components, but the paramount consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. It performed well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care offered.

The final category we rated is long-term care, in which this facility was given a very poor score in this area as well. It received an F for this area, which is obviously somewhat alarming. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is a bad sign for patient care and it may mean that the place is not as well-staffed with nurses and aids. One of the statistics we considered after nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to a relatively low 81 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This is its best feature in this category.