Care One at Lowell

Although this place's overall grade was not a highlight, it did receive a very good score in the area of inspections. We awarded it a B+ for that area, which is one of our better scores. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. This nursing home was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to be an imminent risk to resident health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

This nursing home's second most favorable area ended up being its long-term care score, where it was given a C. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home gave the vaccine to just 47.088184 percent of its residents. Nevertheless, this facility excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. The nursing rating consists of quite a few datapoints, however, the paramount one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, which is a very low figure. Finally, nursing grades also consider quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often an indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

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.