Care One at Lowell

Care One at Lowell is a large nursing home located in Lowell, Massachusetts. Featuring an overall score of B, this looks like a good option. Based on our assessment, you can do much worse than this facility. The best part of this facility's impressive profile is its inspection reports. Inspection grades are discussed in the next section

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe. This indicates that the inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so well is that it received a strong long-term care grade. Indeed, long-term care ended up being its second most favorable category score. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. After we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 82.89703 percent of its residents against pneumonia. This nursing home also keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 1.48 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. We weighed the skill-level of nurses at the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses spent with residents, in determining our grade in this category. This facility provided 3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a resident more often.

The next category we rated was short-term care, which ended up being this nursing home's least impressive category. We gave it a lowly F for this category, which is clearly a bit concerning. Our short-term care grade is generally employed to assess a facility's rehabilitation services. To provide good rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we looked at the number of patients that returned home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 16.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.