Care One at Brookline

One of the many reasons this place received a great overall grade is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. Nursing proved to be its best category. In this category, we awarded this facility an A. Nursing grades are based largely on quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home provides 0.4 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 place Massachusetts in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning a resident at least once a day.

Turning to inspections, this facility excelled in that area, which is based on the nursing home's recent inspections. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

We also wanted to alert you to the fact that this facility received a first-rate grade of A- in our short-term care category. Short-term care grades are meaningful for residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. This includes a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

In the final category we assessed, this facility was given a very favorable grade of B+ in our long-term care category. With this grade, the nursing home topped off a very impressive report card. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 78.60465 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is somewhat lower than we expected but still a respectable figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.