Benchmark Senior Living at The Commons in Lincoln

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was given an A+ for its short-term care grade. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses commit to patients and the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a resident more frequently.

Moving on to the final area, this nursing home also performed admirably in the long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it an A- in this category. This wrapped up truly elite report card. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 93.75 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.