John Scott House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

With an address in Braintree, Massachusetts, John Scott House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center is one of four available nursing homes in this area. Featuring an overall grade of A+, this facility is among the best nursing homes we looked at. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top ten percent of all facilities nationally. Keep reading to find this facility's category ratings, which also impressed us. You really can't do much better than a straight A report card.

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection ratings are based on several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to note the fact that this facility excelled in our short-term care category. We gave them an exemplary score of A+ in this area. Our short-term care ratings are based in part on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a broad spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. One reason for this facility's strong grade in this area is it provides more care from registered nurses to its residents than the typical facility. The final item we looked at in this category is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. It fared as well as just about any nursing home in Massachusetts with 65.8 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, at most nursing homes, less than half of their short-term residents return home.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our nursing grade assesses the facility's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provided 3.8 hours of nursing care per patient each day. At least one quarter of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are skilled nurses. This is a high ratio of skilled nursing. In determining our grades, we apply more weight to care provided by registered nurses. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility Massachusetts in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving a resident more often.

Turning to our last area, this facility received a strong long-term care score. We awarded it an A- in this area, rounding out a straight A profile. For prospective patients seeking a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 90.274315 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which happens to be a bit below what we anticipated but still a respectable figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, at least this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.