Blue Hills Health and Rehabilitation Center

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this nursing home performed well in long-term care. We gave it an impressive grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. If you are seeking services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care ratings. After looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 51.140064 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be a few points lower than we anticipated but still a decent percentage. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, at least this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. This proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of B+. Nursing scores are largely associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility earned a grade of B for its inspections rating. This is a well above average score in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be quite minor. While this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Moving on to our fourth area, this facility was given an acceptable short-term care grade of B-. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.