Blueberry Hill Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center

Blueberry Hill Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center is a large nursing home located in Beverly, Massachusetts. We awarded this nursing home an overall grade of B+. A grade of this caliber requires favorable scores in most areas. Based on the data we reviewed, you could do much worse than this place. This facility was better in some categories than others, but it did not have any poor grades in any of the major areas discussed below. More information about these categories can be found below.

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this facility an A for the area of inspections. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category usually have very few severe deficiencies. 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 performed well in the area of long-term care. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- for that area, which happens to be one of our most impressive grades. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After we finished assessing the amount of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 96.15385 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a dangerous illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Finally, we looked at the facility's number of hospitalizations. Although it had 2.3 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, its risk adjusted metric was middle of the road since it had some more complicated patients.

This nursing home also received a favorable short-term care score. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B in this area. In the area of short-term care, we seek to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. It outperformed the majority of facilities in the nation in this area with 51.5 percent of its patients returning home. This is a higher rate than most facilities.

The last area we assessed turned out to be this facility's weakest area. Nevertheless, even in its worst category we still awarded it a decent grade of B- in nursing. We assessed the licensure of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of time those nurses spent with patients, in computing our score in this category. This nursing home averages 3.1 hours of nursing care per patient each day, which is a very low figure. Lastly, while this place didn't rank well in terms of nursing hours per resident, it fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. In terms of the percentage of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, this nursing home performed better than average.