Nhc Healthcare, Somerville

One of the reasons this place ended up being a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is as good as it gets in this category. Inspection grades 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. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This first-rate facility also performed remarkably in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A+. Only a small group of facilities fared better in this category. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 73.417725 percent of its patients. This is somewhat lower than we were hoping for. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, we were pleased to find nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In addition, this facility received high marks in the area of nursing. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Nursing scores are based largely on quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Switching gears to our next area, this nursing home also excelled in the short-term care category. We gave it a grade of B+ in this category. This wrapped up a first-rate profile. Short-term care ratings are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 4.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home.