Alliance Health at Abbott

We also found that this facility excelled in our long-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are well cared for. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 99.0991 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. In determining a nursing home's nursing grade, we look at the amount of time nurses spend with patients as well as the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nursing home Massachusetts in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a patient more often.

Racking up another strong category grade, this nursing home also excelled in inspections, where it received an A. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. 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 no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The fourth area we analyzed is short-term care, where this nursing home was given a grade of A. This finished off a very favorable profile. Only a select few nursing homes received an A- or higher in every single category. In calculating our short-term care grades, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents that were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.