Hebrew SeniorLife

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category tend to have very few severe deficiencies. Unfortunately, it does not appear that we have deficiency data for this facility. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was superb in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Very few nursing homes fared better in this area. In crafting these short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Contributing to its fine profile, this nursing home also was given a dominant long-term care score, with a grade of A-. If you are looking for anything other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care grades. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. Unfortunately, it does not look like this nursing home submitted data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In our last category, this nursing home also was awarded an excellent nursing score, with a B+. This wrapped up a very favorable profile. There are several data points included in this category. Many of the subcategories are tied to nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home 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 prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving a patient more frequently.