Blaire House of Worcester

While this nursing home's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our best scores. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

In addition, we also wanted to note that this nursing home was awarded positive long-term care marks this year. We gave them one of our better grades in that category, with a B. This proved to be the nursing home's second best grade. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 98.23009 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. The nursing grade assesses quite a few datapoints, however, the main consideration is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a reliable indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place.

The final category we analyzed was short-term care, which is this nursing home's weakest category. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in that area. Unfortunately, this category hurt the facility's overall grade a bit. In our short-term care rating, we strive to create a fair barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze the facility's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. It looks like this nursing home was subpar in two of the key staffing areas we assessed. The facility provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most facilities. The final item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home.