Sacred Heart Nursing Home
359 Summer Street, New Bedford MA 02740 · (508) 996-6751 · 83.77% estimated occupancy 1Updated: Aug 1, 2020 · By Nick Reese
With an address in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Sacred Heart Nursing Home is one of seven available nursing homes in the city. This nursing home turns out to be a grade A facility, which is a dominant grade. Indeed, this proved to be one of the three highest graded nursing homes in the city. If you scroll down, you will see this facility's category ratings, which are also strong.
Additional Details:
Accepts Medicare 1 :
Accepts Medicaid 1 : 217 Beds
CCRC :
Non profit - Corporation
Resident Council:
Family Council:
Medical Staff Hours Per Patient (2019)
Long-term Care Quality
In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an A+ long-term care grade. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After considering the volume of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 38.450073 percent of its patients for pneumonia. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 1.48 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.
Facility Inspections
Adding to this nursing home's impressive resume, we gave this facility a grade of A for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings are tied to pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspections. Nursing homes that score well in this area have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. 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.
Nurse Quality
Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. In calculating a facility's nursing score, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses spend with residents and the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home provides 3.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed better than average in this area. This is often a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.
Short-term Care Quality
The final area we assessed is short-term care. This facility received a better than average nursing grade in our assessment, with a B. While this isn't quite as elite as several of its other scores, this is nevertheless one of our stronger scores for this category. Our short-term care scores are vital for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 38 percent of this facility's residents returned home.
Overall Rating Over Time
Compared to national and state averages across all facilities.
Sacred Heart Nursing Home Quality Metrics
Minimizes Pressure Ulcers
This is the percent of patients that sustained a pressure ulcer. Pressure ulcers are considered to be a measure of nursing care at a nursing home. Pressure ulcers, also known as bed sores, are routinely the result of residents not being moved frequently enough.
Percent of Patients with Pressure Ulcers
Lower is Better
Minimizes Serious Falls
This indicates the percent of residents that suffered from a fall which caused serious injury.
Percent of Patients with Serious Falls
Lower is Better
Minimizes Urinary Tract Infections
This gauges the percentage of long-term care patients which have sustained UTI's. While more of these infections could reflect poorly on a facility's cleanliness, it is problematic to compare between facilities due to facilities having varying reporting standards.
Percent of Patients with UTIs
Lower is Better
Appropriately Uses Anti-Psychotic Medication
This indicates the percentage of patients given antipsychotic medications. While antipsychotic medications may be vital to many residents, it is important to make sure these drugs are being used appropriately. In some situations, increased usage of these drugs may suggest a facility is using these medications to subdue residents.
Percent of Patients
Lower is Better
Appropriately Uses Anti-Anxiety Medication
This indicates the percentage of residents who were prescribed antianxiety medications. These drugs are typically prescribed to patients suffering from anxiety or depression.
Percent of Patients
Lower is Better
Managing Depression Among Residents
This datapoint measures the percentage of long-term stay patients who are demonstrating symptoms of depression.
Percent of Patients
Lower is Better
Appropriate Vaccine Usage
This datapoint is a measure of the percentage of long-term care residents who received the flu and pneumonia vaccines.
Percent of Patients
Higher is Better
Residents Maintain Autonomy
This is the percentage of patients that required additional assistance with activities of daily living over time.
Percentage of Patients
Lower is Better
Ability to Keep Residents Mobile
This is the percent of patients that retained mobility levels over time. Preserving mobility is often a great sign for residents' well-being.
Percentage of Residents
Higher is Better
Hospitalizations
This is the number of times residents are hospitalized per thousand days of care.
Hospitalizations per 1,000 resident days
Lower is Better
Short-term Care: Rehospitalizations
This indicates the number of rehospitalizations per thousand days of short-term care.
Percentage of Residents Rehospitalized
Lower is Better
Short-term Care: ER Visits
This metric is a measure of the number of emergency room visits per thousand days of short-term care. Avoiding emergency medical situations is one way to measure short-term care.
Percentage of Patients
Lower is Better
Short-term Care: Facilitates Functional Improvement
This datapoint is a measure of the percentage of short-term stay residents who saw functional improvements, such as enhanced ability to perform activities of daily living. Many argue that this is a measure of rehabilitation performance.
Percentage of Resident
Higher is Better