New Bedford Jewish Convalescent Home

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this nursing home performed well in our nursing category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. In calculating our nursing scores, we assess both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the training levels of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so well is that it received a very impressive short-term care score. Indeed, short-term care is its second best category score. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A-. Our short-term care grade is commonly employed to measure a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To provide high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility performed well in our long-term care category also. In fact, we awarded it a score of A- for that category, which turns out to be one of our most favorable grades. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. After considering the quantity of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 96.05263 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Finally, we also found that this nursing home has earned favorable government inspections in recent years. In fact, we awarded it a B in this category. Inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category typically have very few severe deficiencies. 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.