Charlestown Community

On top of earning a strong overall score, this nursing home performed well in short-term care. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category, which is one of our highest grades. Our short-term care grades are crucial for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional skilled nursing services. This includes a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients that ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Adding to its impressive profile, this facility also performed well in the category of inspections. In fact, it earned a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that area with an B+. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily something to panic about.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the quantity of hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next category we looked at was long-term care, in which this nursing home was awarded a C. This actually turned out to be this facility's least impressive area. This is nevertheless not the end of the world. Our long-term care grades are essential for people in need of non-healthcare services such as personal care. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. We were a bit worried that this nursing home vaccinated 87.265915 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be quite a bit lower than what we expected. Nevertheless, this facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.