Serenity Hill Nursing Center

We also would like to emphasize the fact that this nursing home has earned excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively minor. 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.

This facility also was awarded a first-rate long-term care grade. In fact, this turned out to be this nursing home's second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a score of A-. For long-term care residents, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 78.46154 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be somewhat lower than we anticipated but still a decent percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, we were pleased to find facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing rating analyzes a handful of subcategories, but the primary one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility 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 often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning residents at least once a day.

The last category we scored is short-term care, in which this facility received a grade of B. This actually proved to be this facility's least impressive area. A facility is doing something right when their lowest grade still is superior to most facilities. Short-term care grades are based on the facility's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents that returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.