Beacon Hill

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Our inspection scores are based on many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home performed well in our long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a score of A- for that category, which turns out to be one of our highest grades. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home also received a strong short-term care score. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B in this area. Short-term care ratings are based on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a broad range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. We were not able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents that eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The final area we analyzed was nursing. We awarded this nursing home a solid grade in that area, with a grade of B-. While this was not as strong as a few of this nursing home's other grades, it is nevertheless not a major area of concern. When calculating a facility's nursing grade, we assess the quantity of hours nurses are caring for patients and the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also considered a few quality-based measures in this category. Although this facility didn't rank highly in terms of nursing hours, it fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. By way of illustration, in terms of the percentage of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility fared better than average. This is generally an indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided with better nursing care.