Fitchburg Healthcare

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility outperformed its overall score in the category of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent government inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our best scores in that category with an A-. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Additionally, we also would like to note that this facility received positive long-term care marks in this assessment. We gave them one of our more favorable grades in this category, with a grade of B. This turned out to be the nursing home's second highest score. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a dangerous health condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not leave this to chance. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. In determining a facility's nursing grade, we consider the number of hours nurses are caring for patients as well as the skill levels of those nurses. This facility provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Lastly, nursing ratings also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this place performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its residents.

The next category we assessed was short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of D for short-term care, leaving this as the facility's weakest category grade. In our short-term care score, we strive to forge a valuable measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we look at the nursing home's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 5.3 percent of its residents returning home. This was well below the national average.