Care One at Lowell

This facility's overall grade was bolstered by the fact that it has earned favorable inspections in recent years. We gave them a strong score in this area, with a B+. This is a notably better grade than the nursing home's overall score. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

Another one of this nursing home's higher category grades came in the category of long-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B. If you are seeking anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care scores. One of the criteria we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 45.289253 percent of its residents. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, at least this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a score of D. In computing a facility's nursing grade, we assess the number of hours nurses spend with patients and the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home averaged a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing grades. This place fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

The last area we assessed was short-term care, which is this nursing home's weakest area. We awarded this facility a grade of D in that area. In our short-term care score, we strive to create a sound barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze a facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last statistic we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics doomed this facility's short-term care score.