Care One at Holyoke

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A+. Very few nursing homes fared this well in this area. Arguably the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was given an A+ long-term care grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to be given multiple A+ category scores. Facilities that receive this kind of score in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. One of the datapoints we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 97.64521 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary deaths for the senior population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. When computing our nursing ratings, we factor in both nursing hours and the skill levels of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we scored was short-term care, where this facility was awarded a grade of B. This actually is this facility's weakest area. A nursing home is doing something right when it's poorest score still rates higher than most other nursing homes. Our short-term care grades are believed to be most meaningful for people requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The final measure we assessed in this area is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.