Soldiers Home in Massachusetts

This facility received a strong overall score as described above, but we especially would like to emphasize its excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded it an A- in this area. Inspection grades weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

Another one of this facility's impressive category scores came in the area of long-term care. We awarded them one of our higher grades in that area, with a score of B+. Facilities that receive this type of score in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are kept in good health. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 99.44751 percent of its patients, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home received a favorable short-term care grade as well. We gave it one of our higher grades in that area with a score of B+. Our short-term care grade is commonly employed to score a facility's performance with rehabilitation In order to have high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally must provide higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this nursing home provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients that were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The next area we scored was nursing. This facility was given a very good nursing rating in our assessment, with a B. This nursing home truly did not have any weak areas. Nursing scores are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these data points as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.