Deaconess Abundant Life Services

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also fared well in our long-term care category, where it received an A+. Few facilities performed better in this area. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 97.65625 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its nursing grade. Nursing grades are mostly tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nursing home Massachusetts in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of turning patients even once per day.

An additional strength for this facility is short-term care, where it received an A+ rating. This is just about as elite as it gets in this area. Our short-term care scores are crucial for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Lastly, this nursing home also received excellent government inspection reports in recent years. We gave it one of our best scores in the area of inspections, with an impressive grade of A. Few other nursing homes can boast of receiving an A- or better in every single category. Inspection grades account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this category generally 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.